<^r^^A 






M4; 



>i'k^'^^' 



5* 


^?v 


^^ 




}h. 






;^?air ^mSS', 


1' 
1 . 






^"^^v;... 


1 


^^'^aN 




4* 




f 







M'. A 



^m 



^\ fi'^ 






'M^:'^r 







m^^^ 



N 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



LECTURES 



ON 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



BY 



ISAAC TAYLOR, 

AVTHOR OF " PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE," " NATURAL HISTORY 
OF ENTHUSIASM," *' HOME EDUCATION," ETC. 




N E w - y R K : 
D. APPLETON & CO., 200, BROADWAY. 

1841 . 



H. LUDWIG. PRINTER 

72 vesey-st., N. Y. 



^\ 






ADVERTISEMENT. 



These Lectures were delivered at the instance 
of the Committee of the " London City Mission," 
and if that Committee be held responsible for 
having made the request, its responsibility there 
ceases. For whatever the Lectures may contain 
the Lecturer alone is answerable, and he supposes 
it not unlikely that more than two or three passages 
might be adduced with which neither that Com- 
mittee, as a body, nor the members of it as indi- 
viduals, would fully concur. The Lecturer confi- 
dently hopes, nevertheless, that, in frankly express- 
ing his sincere convictions, as he is accustomed to 
do, he has not infringed the proprieties of the 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

position he occupied, as called forward on this 
occasion by them. 

In so calling him forth, his much-esteemed 
friends were aware that the Lecturer has never 
been used to speak the language of any one 
section of the religious commonwealth ; and 
while well assured of his firm attachment to 
the great principles of the Gospel, as recovered 
by the Reformers, they would anticipate, as 
probable, some freedom of expression, on parti- 
cular points. 

It is due, as well to those who honoured the 
Lecturer with their attendance, as to his friends 
of the '' London City Mission," to state distinctly 
that, in revising the Lectures for the press, he 
has not merely made many verbal corrections, 
but has introduced more than a few passages 
tending, as he hopes, to strengthen or illustrate 



ADVERTISEMENT. VU 

his argument ; and it is among these added passa- 
ges that will be fomid the more distinct expressions 
of his individual views on points connected with 
the present aspect of our English Christianity. 

It can scarcely be necessary to forewarn the 
reader not to look, in these Lectures, either for 
a systematic digest of Theology, or for a formal 
biblical argument, in support of the several articles 
of an evangelic creed. The Lecturer has not 
thought himself qualified to undertake any such 
task ; nor would any endeavour of the kind have 
consisted with the professed intention of the 
Lectures, which were projected with the hope of 
directing the attention of well-educated persons to 
the great principles of the Gospel ; and especially 
as at this moment put in jeopardy by the wide 
diffusion of opinions which would substitute the 
'' vain inventions " of antiquity, for the purity and 
simplicity of apostolic Christianity. 



via A1>VERTISEMENT. 

Making no pretensions therefore to speak as a 
master of Theology, the Lecturer has ventured, 
as he supposes a private Christian may do w^ith- 
out blame, and especially if his years have been 
devoted to rehgious studies — to present some 
broad views of those principal articles of belief, 
in the truth and import of v^rhich all Christians 
are alike concerned. 



Stanford Rivers, 
April, 1841. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST LECTURE. page 

The Exterior Characteristics of Spiritual Christianitt . . 11 

SECOND LECTURE. 
The Truths peculiar to Spiritual Christianity ...... 89 

THIRD LECTURE. 
The Ethical Characteristics OF Spiritual Christianity . . .139 

FOURTH LECTURE. 
Spiritual Christianity the Hope of the World at the present 
Moment • 187 



NOTES. 

Note to Page 51 239 

Note to Page 58 ; i 241 

Note to Page 100 243 



THE 



FIRST LECTURE 



ON THE EXTERIOR CHARACTERISTICS OF 
SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



ON 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY. 



FIRST LECTURE, 



There may be those who, in comparing the 
physical, or even the moral condition of civihzed and 
of barbarous nations, would give the preference to 
the latter ; alleging that, on the whole, more enjoy- 
ment is secured, and less suffering entailed by a 
lower, than by a more advanced development of the 
social system. But let such a question be deter- 
mined as it may, yet is it certain that, except as 
the consequence of national catastrophes, sudden 
or slow in their operation, no community recedes 
from the position it has reached ; or, by a voluntary 
act, renounces knowledge and the arts, and em- 
braces barbarism. 

Advancement, which is the Law, as well of the 
human mind, individually, as of the social system, 
forbids a deliberate return to what is more simple, 
2 



14 ON SPIRITUAL 

after what is more complex has once been attained ; 
for, to step back on its path, would imply that a 
people should not merely cease to desire what they 
have learned to enjoy ; but that they should consent 
no longer to know, what they had ascertained to be 
true ; and should learn to believe as true, what they 
have discovered to be false ; and should persuade 
themselves to act in a manner which experience has 
taught them is equally absurd and mischievous. 
Even, therefore, if savage life did present itself to 
the view of a civilized people as a paradise ; yet 
between it and themselves there is interposed a gulf, 
into which, indeed, many a nation has been plunged 
headlong, but which none can pass by spontaneous 
movement. 

There may too be those, and perhaps they are 
more than a few, who, knowing little of Christi- 
anity except in its incidental connexion with secular 
affairs, over which it too often throws perplexity ; — 
knowing nothing of its truth, or its energies, or its 
beauty ; and not knowing, or not considering, that 
every other form of religion is utterly destitute as 
well of truth, as of any power to bless, imagine that 
an equitable comparison between the religion of 
Europe, and the religions of Asia, would exhibit 
but an ambiguous advantage in favour of the former. 
Or such persons may persuade themselves that an 
innocuous pantheism, upon the bosom of which all 



CHRISTIANITY. 15 

consciences might be lulled, would indeed be a 
happy exchange for the stirring verities of the Bible. 

Yet even if it were so, no such exchange can 
ever be offered to our choice ; for Christianity, like 
civihzation, and in a much deeper sense, is a move- 
ment forward. Christianity is a system of truths 
which has carried the human mind as far in ad- 
vance of ancient philosophy, as it has of false reh- 
gion. It is no scheme of vague opinions, which 
may be indifferently refuted, or admitted ; but a 
progress in abstract truth — and a progress in moral 
sentiment — and a progress in manners, which, 
though its future course may be arrested by cala- 
mities falling upon the human family, could not be 
freely renounced but by an act of desperation, fatal 
to the social existence of the people that should 
attempt it. 

Christianity is a development, and the only deve- 
lopment ever yet given, of those higher faculties of 
human nature, which although they may long slum- 
ber, yet when once awakened, will not be curbed 
by the limitations of time ; — they will not ; for their 
scope lies far forward in the field of Eternity. 

Christianity, like civilization, may be overborne 
at different points, or turned from its course ; but it 
must recover its lost ground. It is a guardian 
power, which has long been carrying the human 
family, as in its bosom, over a rugged road, and 



16 ONSPIRITUAL 

beneath inclement skies ; but will not be stayed 
until it have fulfilled its trust. 

We grant indeed that a general decay of religious 
belief, throughout Europe, is an event which does 
not want some indications of probability. But if 
we suppose it to have taken place, its visible effects 
would everywhere be those of a turn of tide ; or the 
reflux of a deep current, heretofore setting heaven- 
ward (how stormy soever may have been its sur- 
face, or sluggish its movement.) It would be a 
reflux towards whatever is sensual, selfish, frivo- 
lous, and ferocious. Like the loss of civihzation — 
the loss of Christianity would be equivalent to a 
ceasing to know, a ceasing to feel, a ceasing, in the 
best sense, to live ; or the living on a principle con- 
fessedly earthly, after a higher principle has been 
recognized. 

At this moment the hold of Christianity upon the 
convictions, the moral sentiments, and the manners 
of several of the nations, called Christian, is in the 
last degree feeble ; nevertheless, so long as, even 
in such countries, the Gospel is yet publicly regard- 
ed as true, and so long as its decisions are appealed 
to as of divine authority, the community, low as it 
may have sunk in virtue, has still its eye directed 
upward toward that which is purer and more ele- 
vated, as well in faith as in morals, than any thing 
else around it. Even, therefore, to such communi- 



CHRIS TIAJViTY. 17 

ties, the ceasing to be Christian would not be the 
coming to a stand merely ; but the commencement 
of a descent towards an abyss. 

But to a community within which the Gospel has 
widely diffused itself through the opinions, habits, 
and affections of the mass, and in which it intensely 
affects the moral energies of thousands ; the ceasing 
to be Christian would be a dissolution, political, 
social, domestic : it would be — national death. 

In this country every institution which at once 
fortifies and adorns our social condition, has been 
constructed on the supposition of a flow and pres- 
sure in this one direction ; — that is to say, toward 
whatever is, or is assumed to be, true in rehgion, 
and pure in morals : — every slope in the basement 
of the political building is adapted to this, and to no 
other movement of the waters : — should they turn, 
there is not an embankment which must not yield, 
and add its fragments to the general ruin. 

Throughout southern Europe, where an almost 
stagnant neap-tide of moral feeling has for ages 
covered the surface of society, the turn toward open 
Atheism might show itself only in the drooping of 
heads, this way, instead of that, upon ecclesiastical 
levels ; but it could not be so in England. Eng- 
land, and her affluence at home, and her influence 
through the world, and her bright cluster of ancient 
honours ; England, and her pure domestic affec- 
2* 



18 UNSPIRI TV A L 

tions, and home felicity, and her generous temper, 
and her wide philanthropy ; England, her power 
and her embellishments, we may be assured — is 
fated along with the Gospel. — The waters of the 
sanctuary stand breast high around her, and should 
they fall off, she herself falls, to rise no more. 

In this, if in no other country, Christianity, much 
as it is dishonoured, yet rules in theology, and is 
the standard of morals, and gives sanction to law ; 
and, as an arbiter, acknowledged by all, mediates 
between angry factions. But more than this, it is 
by far the most profound of the forces now at work 
within the social system ; — it is a force not con- 
trollable by any secular, or ordinary means, inas- 
much as, for the sake of it, thousands amongst us, 
if challenged to do so, would relinquish goods, and 
life itself. Amid our very agitations it still conso- 
lidates its power ; and even spurious zeal, (if there 
be any) breaks up the ground for its advances. 
Atheism herself has lately strengthened it by a re- 
action ; while the sudden, and unlocked for revival, 
in our times, of ancient superstitions, directs a new 
attention to its simple truths. Christianity comes 
to our times as the survivor of all systems, and after 
confronting, in turn, every imaginable form of error, 
each of which has gone to its almost forgotten place 
in history — itself alone lives. 

In philosophic scorn we may turn from the peru- 



CHRISTIANITY. 19 

sal of the history of Christianity, during its eighteen 
centimes past, blessing ourselves in a thence-de- 
rived indifference tow^ards all religion. But feelings 
such as these spring from modes of thinking that 
are loose and unphilosophical. What we should 
discern in tlie course of events, on the stage of 
European affairs, during this lapse of time, is — not 
so much a series of interested frauds, of imbecile 
ilhisions, of fanatical violences, borrov^ing a sanc- 
tion from religion ; but rather a slow movement, of 
vast compass, yet tending always towards a high 
moral end, however remote, and which higher end 
it is now visibly approaching. We have before us, 
in this history, a power which, even when the most 
enfeebled or perverted, could lend a grandeur even 
to folly, and a sublimity to extravagance ; which 
has often imparted the energies of virtue to crimes ; 
which has never visited mankind with a scourge, 
without bringing up a blessing ; and which now at 
length stands forward in no other character than as 
the reprover of violence, and of oppression, and of 
impurity ; and as the guardian of whatever is most 
holy and happy. Its spirit and tendency, which 
once might seem ambiguous, are now, by universal 
acknowledgment, simply benign. 

But we are still reminded of the errors, or, to use 
the objector's own word, the inconsistencies of 
Christians, even in these times, when, as we allege. 



60 ONSPIKITUAL 

our religion has recovered, in great measure, its 
pristine purity. Yet justly interpreted, this charge 
conveys the objector's own latent feeling, that 
Christianity is, what we are affirming it to be, an 
idea of perfection, which is in progress to exhibit 
its perfect symmetry. The objector means to say, 
that, should the time ever come when the religion 
of Christ shall have mastered whatever now op- 
poses its influence, and shall reign triumphant, in its 
own splendour, all men will have reached, under 
its guidance, a high stage of moral excellence. 
The objector means to say that, should he survive 
to so happy a day, he himself, urged forward in 
the general movement, will have become wise. 

The same momentous fact, namely. That the 
moral energies of the Gospel are, in great part, yet 
to be developed, indirectly attested as it is even by 
its opponents, is most cordially admitted by its 
friends ; who individually acknowledge, with humi- 
liation, their personal falling short of the rule of 
their profession. Or, if we listen to those whose 
office it is to urge this rule upon others, evidence to 
the same effect is every day borne by all ; for every 
pulpit exhortation, every didactic treatise, every 
urgent appeal made to the Christian community, 
as such ; and every incitement to zeal and diligence 
in works of charity, speaks the same language, and 
attests the deep conviction of each Christian bosom. 



CHRISTIANITT. 21 

that the heavenward impulses of the Gospel are in 
progress, only, towards their consummation in the 
virtue and happiness of mankind. 

What then are the genuine elements of this 
power, which, by the confession of all, is carrying 
forward the social system towards goodness and 
felicity ? What is Christianity ? 

In the present instance we have consented to 
employ a compound phrase, and are to speak of 
Spiritual Christianity. — Have we then in view cer- 
tain refinements upon the broad principles of the 
Gospel ? Or is it our purpose to recommend some 
scheme of piety, elaborately imagined, and deli- 
cately framed, and eligible for the few, and barely 
to be understood even by them ? Indeed it is not. 
— We have no such purpose. We are not instruct- 
ed to be the expositors or champions of partial no- 
tions, or of private conceits, or of fond peculiarities, 
or of mystifications ; or of anything that does not 
lie clearly upon the surface of the inspired pages. 
We are of no party ; we yield undue homage to no 
names ; we have no unconfessed sohcitudes, no in- 
direct purposes ; we challenge for our faith and 
doctrine catholicity, in the highest and best sense 
which that abused word may bear. 

By Spiritual Christianity, therefore, we mean 
nothing more, (and we can mean nothing less) than 
— Christianity itself: Christianity in its simplicity, 



22 ONSPIRITTTAL 

in its grandeur, in its integrity, in its beauty, 
Christianity, as it is truth absolute, truth eternal, 
truth of infinite moment to every man, and intelli- 
gible to every man. 

In proof of the breadth of the view which we 
mean to take of the Gospel, we bind ourselves to 
ask for no practical concessions in behalf of Spi- 
ritual Christianity w^hich may not be demanded, as 
a necessary inference from some one of the prin- 
ciples that, without a doubt, are its visible charac- 
teristics. We inquire then what these visible 
characteristics are ? 



I, 



In reply, We say. First, that Christianity is 
A RELIGION OF Facts ; and we use the term in its 
plain historic sense. Christianity touches the affec- 
tions, and binds the consciences of men, on no other 
plea than that of its being a declaration of facts ; 
and these, either long past, or now passing ; or 
certainly anticipated as yet impending. 

We have not therefore before us either a theory 
of abstract principles, or a system of sentiments, 
selected as excellent and refined, from among other 
eligible modes of feehng. We have not to do with 
a congeries of the best things of all systems, or 
with a convenient summary of the product of the 



CHRISTIANITY. 23 

wisdom of all times. We have not to recommend 
a rule for those who may think good to adopt it. 
We have before us nothing but a series of facts, 
and the just consequences of these facts. Chris- 
tianity is historically true — it is true in its own 
sense ; or it can have no claim upon our se- 
rious regard ; and if, in vindicating the high claim 
it advances, we cannot maintain our position on 
open ground, accessible to all minds, w^e fail by our 
own showing ; or, rather let it be said that, irre- 
spective of the ability, or the want of ability, of any 
single advocate of Christian principles, the Gospel 
demands our submission, purely on the ground 

OF ITS HISTORIC TRUTH. 

Is THEN Christianity historically true ? 

In the present instance we do not hold ourselves 
obliged to undertake an argument so often, and so 
conclusively conducted ; but rather we suppose our- 
selves entitled to assume this as granted ; neverthe- 
less, we must, for a moment, trace a single line of 
connexion between the historical truth of the Gos- 
pel, and those principles of our moral nature, to 
w^hich an appeal is necessarily made in asserting 
the reality of spiritual religion. 

What is it then which the question concerning 
the truth of Christianity supposes to be doubtful ; 
or what is it which can be regarded as open to ar- 



24 ON SPIRITUAL 

gument among those who are at once well informed, 
and candid ? — Not the actual existence of Christi- 
anity, as a visible institute, up through the course 
of time, from the present age to that of the Julian 
Cassars. Nothing within the range of history — 
nothing mathematically demonstrated, is more cer- 
tain than is the series of facts to which we now 
refer. Thus far then, we presume, there can be 
no controversy, or none amongst educated persons. 
Let church history be what it may in its qualities, 
assuredly it is history — and this, close up to the 
moment of its alleged origination.* 

What then is it that may be further questionable ? 
Is it the antiquity and genuineness of the literary 
remains comprised in the canon of the New Testa- 
ment ? If there be indeed room for reasonable 
controversy on this ground, the demur, be it what 
it may, must be dealt with, not in the mass ; but in 
detail ; not in the mode of vague suppositions ; but 
in that of a rigorous attention to every particle of 
the evidence, as severally bearing upon each sepa- 
rate portion of the document ;~upon each book, 
each epistle, each paragraph, sentence, word, sylla- 

* The testimony of the Roman historian, to this effect, is 
by none called in question. Auctor nominis ejus Christus, 
qui Tiberio imperante, per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum, 
supplicio afFectus erat. Tac. An. XY. 



CHRISTIANITY. 25 

ble, letter. There is no summary process by- 
means of which a controversy hke this may be 
disposed of. The question, if indeed there be a 
question, is one of historical criticism ; and is to be 
determined in no other manner than bv a diligent 
application of the rules of that now well-digested 
science. 

Nor can it be necessary to remind well-informed 
persons, that the legitimate deductions of one science 
are not to be overruled by sidelong inferences, de- 
rived from another. The question being — whether 
Caesar's Commentaries are indeed Caesar's ; we are 
not to be told, as a sufficient reply, that the newest 
discoveries in human physiology, or that recent ex- 
periments in chemistry, or that a doctrine derived, 
yesterday, from an excavation, does not favour the 
affirmative ? Nothing can be more impertinent or 
unphilosophical than intrusions of this sort.* 

* But if, on grounds of philosophical justice, we thus pro- 
test against the interference of the physical or physiological 
sciences with the historical evidences of Christianity; the 
very same doctrine, must in all equity, be held to condemn 
the ill-considered zeal of those who, from mistaken religious 
motives, would fain interdict the advances of science, even 
when confining itself to its own ground, and when employing 
methods altogether unexceptionable. Those who have indeed 
made themselves familiar with the historic proof of Christi- 
anity, will be exempt from all soUcitude as to the ultimate 
conclusions of Geology, or of any other science. 
3 



26 ON SPIRITUAL 

But if there he a question concerning the antiquity 
or genuineness of any portion of the New Testa- 
ment, the well-informed Christian will be the most 
eager to provoke, and the most assiduous in prose- 
cuting the inquiry ; and if there are any who wish 
to evade it, it must be either the ill-informed Chris- 
tian, or the too well-informed infidel. 

But it is said that '' this critical argument in sup- 
port of the antiquity and genuineness of the several 
portions of the New Testament, is too recondite to 
be appreciable by the majority, even of well-edu- 
cated persons." — Is it so ? — then it keeps company 
with the entire circle of the modern sciences, whe- 
ther abstract or physical. 

Even in an assembly of well-educated persons, 
there are not many who would profess themselves 
to be competent to follow, intelligently, the demon- 
stration which estabhshes the mechanism of the hea- 
vens, as now constituting the creed of Astronomy. 
Beyond the walls of colleges, everything in science 
is taken on trust ; and it is very safely so taken ; 
for all well know, that the professors of science, in 
these times, mystify nothing ; and offer satisfactory 
proof in support of whatever they affirm. Although 
there be few, in fact, who tread the paths of philo- 
sophy, there is neither bar at the entrance, nor 
labyrinth midway in the course. It should be re- 
membered that, just in proportion as the results of 



CHRISTIANITY. 27 

modern science have become unquestionably cer- 
tain, the proof of that certainty has become the 
more recondite, and so as to be fully intelligible 
only to those who devote their lives to the pursuit. 

So it is likewise on the field of historical criti- 
cism ; and precisely because the methods of proof 
now resorted to, are wide in their range, various in 
their elements, and rigidly exact in their inductions ; 
— it is because they are certain, that they are also 
difficult ; it is because they are circumstantially 
strong, nay, irrefragable, that they demand powers 
of attention severely disciplined, and many accom- 
plishments, in those who would follow them through 
their ample circuits. 

We affirm then, that which will not be disputed 
by any who are competent to call it in ques- 
tion, that, in the authentic methods of historical 
criticism, rigorously and laboriously applied to 
the Christian documents, and to every separate 
portion of them (a very few passages or phrases 
being excepted) the genuineness of the books of 
the New Testament has, in our own times, been 
placed far beyond the reach of all reasonable doubt. 
How difficult soever, or even impracticable it may 
be to render this sort of evidence fully intelligible 
to the imperfectly informed, no well-educated per- 
son can feel a serious difficulty in yielding his ab- 
solute assent to it. 



28 ONSPIRITUAL 

Here then we set our foot upon a rock. But let 
it be well observed that, while the proof, could it 
be produced, of the spuriousness of one or more 
passages, or even of ample portions of the received 
canon, would leave the Christian argument un- 
touched, in the main ; on the contrary, unquestion- 
able proof of the genuineness of any one consider- 
able portion of that canon, would carry the whole 
weight of Christianity ; for such an attested por- 
tion could not be made to consist with the hj^po- 
thesis of infidelity. 

To rid the world therefore, as the infidel might 
wish to do, of the Evangelic history, each of the 
Gospels, separately, and each of the Epistles, se- 
parately, must be proved to be spurious. One of 
the Gospels would save our religion ; or a single 
apostolic Epistle, like a morning star alone in the 
skies, when all other stars are obscured, would re- 
deem the world from the darkness of Atheism. 

But if the books be genuine ; what is it further 
which may reasonably be doubted ? Instead of 
opening an extensive argument which has so often 
and so conclusively been handled, we shall confine 
ourselves to considerations proper to our peculiar 
subject. We are then to speak of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity, and to insist upon modes of feeling of a 
kind to raise us above the low levels of frivolous 
pleasure, or of sordid secular avocations. By the 



.^ 



CHRISTIANITY. 29 

very necessity of our subject therefore, we must 
make a frequent appeal to the moral sense, and 
must suppose, in the hearer, not merely conscience 
and candour ; but the sensibilities and instincts of 
a well-ordered mind, alive in some degree, to the 
S}niipathies of virtue. We are not professing to 
address those who have lived in too constant fami- 
liarity with what is gross or selfish, to allow the 
moral faculties to have retained their genuine force. 

Yet let it not hence be inferred that our argument 
is itself a refinement, not intelligible except to those 
whose mental qualifications are peculiar. A vivid 
moral sense, and a just taste, even if they be rare 
in fact, are so, not because factitious ; but because 
in too many they have become blunted by a course 
of life, unfavourable to their exercise. Nor do we 
address ourselves to a fine discriminating moral 
faculty, as contradistinguished from the rude, yet 
native impressions of uncultivated minds, and 
which would at once admit all that we are now 
to ask ; but rather as opposed to that which itself 
is opposed to nature, and to truth of feeling. 

A correct moral feeling, under the guidance of 
which he who possesses it makes his way with cer- 
tainty through the labyrinths of a crowded, sophis- 
ticated world, choosing by its aid, his friend — his 
colleague, his agent, with a seldom-baffled tact, 
and holding himself at the distance of civility from 
3* 



30 ON SPIRITUAL 

many against whom he could bring no accusation — 
this feehng, and this taste, the antennce of the mind, 
are as apphcable to the persons of history, as to 
the persons of the present moment ; or to such of 
them, at least, as have become known to us, not 
through the artificial medium of rhetorical eulogies, 
but by the reports of unconnected contemporaries, 
who have related, as by accident, the less as well 
as the more important incidents of their private life, 
and have repeated, perhaps with little skill as to 
the selection, their conversations and discourses. 
Brought to bear on such instances, the moral 
sense and taste, — or the instinctive feehng of what 
is true in human nature, and of what is harmonious 
and consistent with itself — are less fallible, we may 
boldly say, than direct reasoning, even of the 
severest sort ; for in our reasonings, a false step, 
at the commencement, sends us far astray ; but 
as to the inductions of the moral sense, in gather 
ing them up, we are feeling our path as we pro- 
ceed, and at every step we get so much the nearer 
to truth and certainty. Logic takes us on a circuit, 
which if the course be but correctly calculated, 
brings us round to a legitimate conclusion. But 
the method of induction by the tact of the moral 
sense, is a walking wath nature, on a day's jour- 
ney ; and a making ourselves familiar with the 



CHRISTIANITY. 31 

sweet tones of her voice in a lengthened com- 
munion. 

We should however well observe the separate 
offices of the logic of critical evidence, and of the 
logic of the moral sense, as applied to the discrimi- 
nation of the genuine and the spurious in history. 
Thus, in the instance before us, it belongs to the 
former, embracing the science of criticism as a sub- 
sidiary means, to trace, in the original records of 
Christianity — in their varied style, in their phrases, 
proper to the time, country, and writers — in their 
incidental allusions to persons, events and usages 
— in their internal agreements, and not less, in 
their disagreements, the infallible marks of au- 
thenticity. Nor does any thing remain to be 
desired in the w^ay of proof, in this line, which 
may not be found in many conclusive modern 
works. 

It is the office, moreover, of the historical logic, 
as applied to the Christian evidences, to show (and 
w^hich may most certainly be done) that the 
memoirs of Christ have been derived from, at the 
least, three independent sources ; and therefore, 
that the supposition, could it otherwise for a mo- 
ment be entertained, of an imaginative creation 
of this altogether singular narrative, is totally 
excluded. 

The same species of argument, moreover, will 



32 ON SPIRITUAL 

exhibit the manifest incompetency of the writers of 
the Gospels — one and all, for the task of a literary 
creation ; and their competency for that only of 
furnishing an inartificial report of incidents and 
discourses. 

So far, a strict analysis of the entire mass of the 
evidence, and of the minute circumstances which 
attach to it, excludes every doubt that the evangelic 
history is — history. 

But now, aftei* these rigorous methods of analysis 
have done their part, something remains which, 
in fact, if it can be satisfactorily achieved, carries 
conviction home to the mind in a manner not often 
if ever effected by a merely critical argument. 

We summon then to our aid, those powers of 
perception which, even if they cannot clothe them- 
selves in words, and therefore cannot be conveyed 
distinctly from mind to mind, are not therefore the 
less to be relied upon. Yet let us not be misunder- 
stood ; nor let it for a moment be supposed that we 
are so forgetful of the principles of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity, hereafter to be affirmed, as to attempt to 
hale things divine to the tribunal of the perverted 
moral perceptions of the human mind. This we 
are not doing ; but are only endeavouring to bring 
the moral sense to bear upon objects which lie 
altogether within its proper range ; — that is to say, 
upon human character, human conduct, and upon 



CHRISTIANITY. 33 

the well-known harmonies of the world of mind, as 
exposed to our view in others, or as presented by 
our personal consciousness. 

Moreover we do not hesitate to ask, that such 
faint conceptions as the human mind may of itself 
entertain, of the bright excellence of a better world, 
should be at hand, and give their testimony, so far 
as they may, in support of ^our conclusions ; for it 
has ever been held that, if the spotless virtue of 
heaven were to appear upon earth, she would be 
recognized and reverenced, even by the most abject, 
or the most perverted of mankind. 

Read then the Gospels, simply as historical me- 
moirs : and by such aids as they alone supply, make 
yourself acquainted with Him who is the subject of 
these narrations. Bring the individual conception, 
as distinctly as possible before the mind : — allow the 
moral sense to confer, in its own manner, and at 
leisure, wdth this unusual form of humanity. — '^ Be- 
hold the man " — even the Saviour of the world, and 
say whether it be not historic truth that is before the 
eye. The more peculiar is this form, yet withal 
symmetrical, the more infallible is the impression of 
reality we thence receive. What we have to do 
with in this instance, is not an undefined ideal of 
wisdom and goodness, conveyed in round affirma- 
tions, or in eulogies ; but with a self-developed 
individuality, in conveying which the writers of the 



34 ONSPIRITUAL 

narrative do not appear. In this instance, if in any, 
the medium is transparent : nothing intervenes 
between the reader and the personage of the his- 
tory, in whose presence we stand, as if not separated 
by time and space. 

It may be questioned whether the entire range 
of ancient history presents any one character in 
colours of reahty so fresh as those which distinguish 
the personage of the evangehc memoirs. The 
sages and heroes of antiquity — less and less nearly 
related, as they must be, to any living interests, 
are fading amid the mists of an obsolete world : but 
He who '' is the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
ever," is offered to the view of mankind, in the 
dyes of immortality, fitting a history, which, instead 
of losing the intensity of its import, is gathering 
weight by the lapse of time. 

The Evangelists, by the translucency of their 
style, have given a lesson in biographical compo- 
sition, showing how perfectly individual character 
may be expressed in a method which disdains every 
rule but that of fidelity. It is personal humanity, 
in the presence of which we stand, while perusing 
the Gospels, and to each reader, apart, if serious 
and ingenuous, and yet incredulous, the Saviour of 
the world addresses a mild reproof — '' It is I. — 
Behold my hands and my feet : — Reach hither thy 
hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faith- 



CHRISTIANITY. 35 

less, but believing." And can we do otherwise than 
grant, all that is now demanded — namely. That the 
Evangelists record the actions and discourses of a 
real person ? 

It is well to consider the extraordinary contrasts 
that are yet perfectly harmonized in the personal 
character of Christ. 

At a first glance he appears always in his own 
garb of humility ; lowliness of demeanour is his 
very characteristic. But we must not forget that 
this lowliness was combined with nothins^ less than 
a solemnly proclaimed, and peremptory challenge 
of rightful headship over the human race ! Never- 
theless the oneness of the character — the fair per- 
fection of the surface, suffers no rent by this 
blending of elements so strangely diverse. Let 
us then bring before the mind, with all the distinct- 
ness we can, the conception of the Teacher, more 
meek than any who has ever assumed to rule the 
opinions of mankind, and who yet, in the tones 
proper to tranquil modesty, and as conscious at 
once of power and right, anticipates that day of 
wonder, when, ^' the King shall sit on the throne 
of his glory," with his angels attendant ; and when 
" all nations shall be gathered before him," from 
his lips to receive their doom ! The more these 
elements of personal character are disproportionate, 



36 ON SPIRITUAL 

the more convincing is the proof of reahty, which 
arises from their harmony. 

We may read the Evangehsts hstlessly, and not 
perceive this evidence ; but we can never read 
them intelhgently without yielding to it our con- 
victions. 

If the character of Christ be, as indeed it is, 
altogether unmatched, in the circle of history, it is 
even less so by the singularity of the intellectual 
and moral elements which it combines, than by the 
sweetness and perfection which result from their 
union. This will appear the more, if we consider 
those instances in which the combination was alto- 
gether of an unprecedented kind. 

Nothing has been more constant in the history 
of the human mind, whenever the religious emo- 
tions have gained a supremacy over the sensual 
and sordid passions, than the breaking out of the 
ascetic temper in some of its forms ; and most often 
in that which disguises virtue, now as a spectre, 
now as a maniac, now as a mendicant, now as a 
slave, but never as the bright daughter of heaven. 
Of the three Jewish sects, extant in our Lord's 
time, two of them — that is to say, the two that 
made pretensions to any sort of piety, had assumed 
the ascetic garb, in its two customary species — the 
philosophic (the Essenes) and the fanatical (the 
Pharisees) ; and so strong and uniform is this 



CHRISTIANITY. 37 

crabbed inclination, that Christianity itself, in violent 
contrariety to its spirit and its precepts, went off 
into the ascetic temper, within a century after the 
close of the apostolic age, or even earlier. 

Under this aspect then, let us for a moment 
consider the absolutely novel phenomenon of the 
Teacher of a far purer morality than the world had 
heretofore ever listened to ; yet himself affecting 
no singularities in his modes of living. The supe- 
riority of the soul to the body, was the very purport 
of his doctrine ; and yet he did not waste the body 
by any austerities ! The duty of self-denial he 
perpetually enforced ; and yet he practised no 
factitious mortifications! This Teacher, not of 
abstinence, but of virtue ; this Reprover, not of 
enjoyment, but of vice, himself went in and out 
among the social amenities of ordinary life with so 
unsohcitous a freedom, as to give colour to the 
malice of hypocrisy, in pointing the finger at him, 
saying — " Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine- 
bibber ; a friend (companion) of publicans and 
sinners !" Should we not then note this singular 
apposition and harmony of qualities — that he who 
was famihar with the festivities of heaven, did not 
any more disdain the poor solaces of mortality, than 
disregard its transient pains and woes ? Follow 
this same Jesus from the banquets of the opulent, 
where he showed no scruples in diet, to the high- 
4 



38 ONSPIRITUAL 

ways and wildernesses of Judea, where, never 
indifferent to human sufferings, he healed " as many 
as came unto him." 

These remarkable features in the personal char- 
acter of Christ have often, and very properly been 
adduced, as instances of the unrivalled wisdom and 
elevation, which marked him as pre-eminent among 
the wise and good. 

It is not however for this purpose that we now 
refer to them ; but rather as harmonies, altogether 
inimitable, and which put beyond doubt the historic 
reahty of the Person. Thus considered, they must 
be admitted by calm minds as carrying the truth of 
Christianity itself. 

There are however those who will readil)'' grant 
us, what indeed they cannot, with any appearance 
of candour deny — the historic reality of the person 
of Christ, and the more-than-human excellence 
which his behaviour and discourses embody ; but 
at this point they declare that they must stop. Let 
such persons see to it : — they cannot stop at this 
point ; for just at this point there is no ground on 
which foot may stand. 

— What are the facts ? 

— The inimitable characteristics of nature attach 
to what we may call the common incidents of the 
evangelical history, and in which Jesus of Nazareth 
is seen mingling himself with the ordinary course 



CHRISTIANITY. 39 

of social life. But is it true that these characteris- 
tics suddenly, and in each instance, disappear when 
the same person is presented to us walking on 
another, and a high path — namely, that of super- 
natural power ? It is not so, and on the contrary, 
very many of the most peculiar and infallible of 
those touches of tenderness and pathos which so 
generally mark the evangelic narrative, belong 
precisely to the supernatural portions of it, and are 
inseparably connected with acts of miraculous 
beneficence. We ask that the Gospels be read with 
the utmost severity of criticism, and with this 
especial object in view, namely — to inquire — 
Whether those indications of reality which have 
already been yielded to as irresistible evidences of 
truth, do not belong as fully to the supernatural, as 
they do to the ordinary incidents of the Gospels ? 
or in other words, whether, unless we resolve to 
overrule the question by a previous determination, 
any ground of simply historic distinction presents 
itself, marking off the supernatural from the ordi- 
nary events of the evangelic narratives ? 

If we feel ourselves to be conversing with historic 
truth, as well as with heavenly wisdom, when Jesus 
is before us, seated on the mountain brow, and 
delivering the Beatitudes to his disciples ; is it so 
that the colours become confused, and the contour 
of the figures unreal, when the same personage, in 



40 ON SPIRITUAL 

the midst of thousands, seated by fifties on the 
grassy slope, supphes the hunger of the multitude 
by the word of his power ? Is it historic truth that 
is presented when the fearless Teacher of a just 
morality convicts the Rabbis of folly and perversity ; 
and less so when, turning from his envious oppo- 
nents, he says to the paralytic — *' Take up thy bed 
and walk ? " Nature herself is before us when the 
repentant woman, after washing the Lord's feet 
with her tears, and wiping them with her hair, sits 
contrasted with the obdurate and uncourteous 
Pharisee : — But the very same bright forms of 
reality mark the scene when Jesus, filled with com- 
passion at the sight of a mother's woe, stays the 
bier, and renders her son alive to her bosom. 

Or, if we turn to those portions of the Gospels in 
which the incidents are narrated more in detail, and 
where a greater variety of persons is introduced, and 
where therefore the supposition of fabrication is the 
more peremptorily excluded, it is found that the su- 
pernatural and the ordinary elements are in no way 
to be distinguished in respect of the simple vivacity 
with which both present themselves to the eye. The 
evangelic narrative offers the same bright translu- 
cency — the same serenity, and the same precision, 
in reporting the most astounding, as the most fa- 
miliar occurrences. It is like a smooth-surfaced 
river which, in holding its course through a varied 



CHRISTIANITY. 41 

country, reflects from its bosom, at one moment the 
amenities of a homely border, and at the next the 
summits of the Alps, and both with the same un- 
ruffled fidelity. 

As the subject of a rigorous historic criticism, and 
all hypothetical opinions being excluded, no pretext 
whatever presents itself for drawing a line around 
the supernatural portions of the Gospels, as if they 
were of suspicious aspect, and difl*ered from the con- 
text in historic verisimilitude. Without violence 
done to the rules of criticism, we cannot detach the 
miraculous portions of the history, and then put to- 
gether the mutilated portions, so as to consist with 
the undoubted reality of the part which is retained. 

Or take the narrative of the raising of Lazarus of 
Bethany. A brilliant vividness, as when a sunbeam 
breaks from between clouds, illumines this unmatch- 
ed history ; — and it rests with equal intensity upon 
the stupendous miracle, and upon the beauty and 
grace of the scene of domestic sorrow. If we follow 
Martha and Mary from the house to the spot where 
they meet their friend, and give a half-utterance to 
their confidence in his power ; at what step — let us 
distinctly determine — at what step, as the group pro- 
ceeds towards the sepulchre, shall we halt and refuse 
to accompany it ? Where is the break in the story, 
or the point of transition ; and w^here does history 
finish, and the spurious portion commence ? Is it 
4* 



42 ONSPIRITUAL 

when we approach the cave's mouth that the ges- 
tures of the persons become unreal, and the lan- 
guage untrue to nature 1 Where is it that the indi- 
cations of tenderness and majesty disappear ? — at 
the moment when Jesus weeps ; or when he in- 
vokes his Father ; or when, with a voice which 
echoes in Hades, he challenges the dead to come 
forth ; or is it when *' he who was dead," obeys this 
bidding ? 

We affirm that, on no principles which a sound 
mind can approve, is it possible, either to deny the 
reality of the natural portions of this narrative, or to 
sever these from the supernatural. But this is not 
enough ; for it might be in fact more easy to offer 
some intelhgible solution of the difficulty attaching 
to the supposition that the Gospels are not true, in 
respect of the ordinary, than of the extraordinary 
portion of their materials. If we were to allow it 
to be possible (which it is not) that writers showing 
so little inventive or plastic power, as do Matthew 
the Publican, and John of Galilee, should, with the 
harmony of truth, have carried their imaginary Mas- 
ter through the common acts and incidents of his 
course ; never could they, no, nor writers the most 
accomplished, have brought him, in modest simpli- 
city, through the miraculous acts of that course. 
Desperate must be the endeavour to show that, 
while the ordinary events of the Gospel must be ad- 



CHRISTIANITY. 43 

mitted as true, the extraordinary are incredible. On 
the contrary, it would be to the former, if to any, 
that a suspicion might attach ; — for as to the latter, 
they cannot but be true : if not true, whence are 
they? 

The scepticism, equally condemned as it is by 
historical logic and the moral sense, which allows 
the natural, and disallows the supernatural portion 
of the history of Christ, is absolutely excluded when 
we compare, in the four Gospels, separately, the 
narrative of what precedes the resurrection, with 
the closing portions, which bring the crucified Jesus 
again among his disciples. 

If those portions of the evangelic history which 
reach to the moment of the death of Christ, are, in 
a critical sense, of the same historic quality as those 
which run on to the moment of his ascension, and if 
the former absolutely command our assent — if they 
carry it as by force, then, by a most direct inference, 
** is Christ risen indeed," and become the first fruits 
of immortality to the human race. Then is it true 
that, *^ as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be 
made alive." No narrative is any where extant 
comparable to that of the days and hours imme- 
diately preceding the crucifixion ; and the several 
accounts of the hurried events of those days present 
the minute discordancies which are always found 



44 ONSPIRITUAL 

to belong to genuine memoirs, compiled by eye- 
witnesses. 

The last supper and its sublime discourses ; the 
agony in the garden, the behaviour of the traitor, 
the scenes in the hall of the chief priest, and before 
the judgment seat of the Roman procurator — and in 
the Palace of Herod, and in the place called the 
Pavement, and on the w^ay from the city ; — and the 
scene on Calvary, are true — if anything in the com- 
pass of history be true. 

But now — if our moral perceptions are, in this 
way, to be hstened to, not less incontestably real 
are the closing chapters of the four Gospels, in 
which we find the same sobriety and the same vi- 
vacity ; the same distinctness, and the same fresh- 
ness ; the same pathos, and the same wisdom, and 
the same majesty ; and yet all chastened by the re- 
collected sorrows of a terrible conflict just passed, 
and mellowed with the glow of a triumph at hand. 

Let it be imagined that writers such as the evan- 
gelists, might have led their master as far as to 
Calvary ; but could they, unless truth had been be- 
fore them, have reproduced him from the sepul- 
chre ? What abruptness, harshness, extravagance, 
what want of harmony, would have been presented 
in the closing chapters of the Gospels, if the same 
Jesus had not supplied the writers with their mate- 



CHRISTIANITY. 45 

rials, by going in and out among them after his 
resurrection ! 

On the supposition that Christ did not rise from 
the dead, let any one whose moral tastes are not 
entirely blunted, read the narrative of his encounter 
with Mary in the garden, and with his disciples in 
the inner chamber, and again on the shore of the 
Lake ; let him study the perfect simplicity and yet 
the warmth of the interview with the two disciples 
on their way to Emmaus. The better taste of 
modern times, and the just sense of what is true 
in sentiment, and pure in composition, give us an 
advantage in an analysis of this sort. Guided, then, 
by the instincts of the most severe taste, let us 
spread before us the final portion of the Gospel of 
Luke ; — namely, the twenty-fourth chapter, which 
reports a selection of the events occurring between 
the early morning of the first day of the week, and 
that moment of wonder when, starting from the 
world he had ransomed, the Saviour returned 
whence he had come. Will any one who is ac- 
quainted with antiquity affirm that any writer, 
Greek, Roman, or Barbarian, has come down to 
us, whom we can believe capable of conceiving at 
all of such a style of incident or discourse ; or who, 
had he conceived it, could have conveyed his con- 
ception in a style so chaste, natural, calm, lucid, 
pure ? Nothing like this narrative is contained in 



46 ON SPIRITUAL 

all the circle of ifiction, and nothing equal to it in all 
the circle of history ; and yet nothing is more per- 
fectly consonant with the harmonies of nature. We 
may listlessly peruse this page, each line of which 
wakens a sympathy in every bosom which itself 
responds to truth. But if we ponder it — if we al- 
low the mind to grasp the several objects, we are 
vanquished by the conviction that all is real. — But 
if real, and if Christ be risen indeed, then is Chris- 
tianity indeed a religion of facts ; and then are 
we fully entitled to a bold affirmation, and urgent 
use of whatever inferences may thence be fairly 
deduced. 

Acute minds will not be slow to discern, as in 
perspective before them, the train of those infer- 
ences which we shall feel ourselves at liberty to 
deduce from the admission that Christianity is his- 
torically true. This admission cannot, we are 
sure, be withheld ; and yet let it not be made with 
a reserved intention to evade the consequences. 
What are they ? — They are such as embrace the 
personal well-being of every one ; for, if Christi- 
anity be a history, it is a history still in full pro- 
gress ; it is a history running on, far beyond the 
dim horizon of human hopes and fears. 

But it is said, all this, at the best, is moral evi- 
dence only ; and those who are conversant with 



CHRISTIANITY. 47 

mathematical demonstrations, and with the rigorous 
methods of physical science, must not be required 
to jueld their convictions easily to mere moral evi- 
dence. 

We ask, have those who are accustomed thus to 
speak, actually considered the import of their objec- 
tion ; or inquired what are the consequences it in- 
volves, if valid ? We believe not ; and we think so, 
because the very terms are destitute of logical mean- 
ing ; or imply, if a meaning be assigned to them, a 
palpable absurdity. 

If, for a moment, we grant an intelhgible mean- 
ing to the objection as stated, and consent to under- 
stand the terms in which it is conveyed, as they are 
often used, then we affirm — That some portion of 
even the abstract sciences is less certain than are 
very many things established by what is called 
moral evidence — That a large amount of what is 
accredited as probably true within the circle of the 
physical and mixed sciences is immeasurably in- 
ferioi' in certainty to much which rests upon moral 
evidence : — and further — That so far from its being 
reasonable to reject this species of evidence, the 
mere circumstance of a man's being known to dis- 
trust it in the conduct of his daily affairs, would be 
held to justify, in his case, a commission of lunacy. 

No supposition can be more inaccurate than that 
which assumes the three kinds of proof, mathema- 



48 ONSPIRITUAL 

tical^ physical^ and moral, to range, one beneath 
the other, in a regular gradation of certainty ; — as 
if the mathematical were in all cases absolute ; the 
physical a degree lower, or, as to its results, in 
some degree, and always, less certain than those of 
the first ; and by consequence the third, being in- 
ferior to the second, necessarily far inferior to the 
first ; and therefore, always much less certain than 
that which alone deserves to be spoken of as cer- 
tain ; and in fact barely trustworthy in any case. 

Any such distribution of the kinds of proof is 
mere confusion ; illogical abstractedly, and involving 
consequences, which, if acted upon, would appear 
ridiculously absurd. 

It is indeed true, that the three great classes of 
facts — the universal, or absolute — (mathematical 
and metaphysical) the general, or physical — and the 
individual (forensic and historical) are pursued and 
ascertained by three corresponding methods — or, 
as they might be called — three logics. But it is far 
from being true that the three species of reasoning 
hold an exclusive authority, or sole jurisdiction, 
over the three classes of facts above mentioned. 
Throughout the physical sciences, the mathemati- 
cal logic is perpetually resorted to ; while, even 
within the range of the mathematical, the physical 
is, once and again, brought in as an aid. But if we 
turn to the historical and forensic department of 



CHRISTIANITY. 49 

facts, the three methods are so blended in the esta- 
bhshment of them, that, to separate them altogether 
is impracticable ; and as to moral evidence, if we 
use the phrase in any intelligible sense, it does but 
give its aid, at times, on this ground ; and even then 
the conclusions to which it leads rest upon induc- 
tions which are physical, rather than moral. 

The conduct of a complicated historical, or fo- 
rensic argument concerning individual facts, re- 
sembles the manipulations of an adroit workman, 
who, having some nice operation in progress, lays 
down one tool, and snatches up another, and then 
another, according to the momentary exigencies of 
his task. 

That sort of evidence may properly be called 
moral, which appeals to the moral sense, and in 
assenting to which, as we often do with an irresis- 
tible conviction, we are unable, with any precision, 
to convey to another mind the grounds of our firm 
belief. It is thus, often, that we estimate the vera- 
city of a witness, or judge of the reality or spurious- 
ness of a written narrative. But then even this 
sort of evidence, when nicely analyzed, resolves it- 
self into physical principles. What are these con- 
victions, which we find it impossible to clothe in 
words, but the results, in our minds, of slow, in- 
voluntary inductions concerning moral qualities, and 
which, inasmuch as they are peculiarly exact, are 
5 



50 ONSPXRiTtAL 

not to be transfused into a medium so vague and 
faulty as is language, at the best. 

As to the mass of history, by far the larger por- 
tion of it rests, in no proper sense, upon moral 
evidence. To a portion the mathematical doctrine 
of probabilities applies ; — for it may be as a million 
to one, that an alleged fact, under all the circum- 
stances, is true. But the proof of the larger portion 
resolves itself into our knowledge of the laws of the 
material world, and of those of the world of mind. 
A portion also is conclusively established by a mi- 
nute scrutiny of its agreement with that intricate 
combination of small events which makes up the 
course of human affairs. 

Every real transaction, especially those w^hich 
flow on through a course of time, touches this web- 
work of small events at many points, and is woven 
into its very substance. Fiction may indeed paint 
its personages so as for a moment to deceive the 
eye ; — but it has never succeeded in the attempt to 
foist its factitious embroideries upon the tapestry of 
truth. 

"We might take as an instance, that irresistible 
book in which Paley has established the truth of 
the personal history of St. Paul.* It is throughout 
a tracing of the thousand fibres by which a long 

"^ The ^* Horse Paulinae." 



CHRISTIANITY. 51 

series of events connects itself with the warp and 
woof of human affairs. To apply to evidence of 
this sort, the besom of scepticism, and sweepingly 
to remove it as consisting only in moral evidence^ 
is an amazing instance of confusion of mind. 

It is often loosely affirmed that history rests 
mainly upon moral evidence. Is then a Roman 
camp moral evidence ? Or is a Roman road moral 
evidence ? Or are these and many other facts, when 
appealed to as proof of the assertion that, in a re- 
mote age, the Romans held military occupation of 
Britain, moral evidence ? If they be, then we affirm 
that, when complete in its kind, it falls not a whit 
behind mathematical demonstration, as to its cer- 
tainty.* 

Although it is not true that Christianity rests 
mainly upon moral evidence, yet it is true, that it 
might rest on that ground with perfect security. 

It is to this species of evidence that we have now 
appealed ; not as establishing the heavenly origin 
of Christianity — which it does establish ; but simply 
as it attests the historic reality of the person of 
Christ. And here we must ask an ingenuous con- 
fession from whoever may be bound in foro con- 

* Some instances, intended to place this important point 
in a clear light, will be found in a note appended to the Lec- 
tures. 



52 ONSPIRITTTAL 

scienticB to give it, that the notion of Christianity, 
and the habitual feehngs toward it of many in this 
Christian country, are such as if, brought to the 
test of severe reasoning, could by no ingenuity be 
made to consist, either with the supposition that 
Christianity is historically false, or that it is his- 
torically true ! This ambiguous faith of the cul- 
tured, less reasonable than the superstitions of the 
vulgar (for they are consistent, w^hich this is not) 
could never hold a place in a disciplined mind but 
by an act, repeated from day to day, and similar to 
that of a man who should refuse to have the shut- 
ters removed from the windows on that side of his 
house whence he might descry the residence of his 
enemy. 

If Christianity be historically true, it must be 
granted to demand more than a respectful acknow- 
ledgment that its system of ethics is pure ; or, were 
it historically false, we ought to think ourselves to 
be outraging at once virtue and reason in allowing 
its name to pass our lips. While bowing to Chris- 
tianity as good, and useful ; and yet not invested 
with authority toward ourselves, we are entangled 
in a web of inconsistencies, of which we are not 
conscious, only because we choose to make no 
effort to break through it. If Christianity be true, 
then is it true that — *^ We must all appear before 
the judgment-seat of Christ ;" and must, *^ every one 



CHRISTIANITY. 53 

of US, give an account of himself to God." What 
meaning do such words convey to the minds of 
those who, with an equal alarm, would see Chris- 
tianity overthrown as a controlling power in the 
social system ; or find it brought home to them- 
selves, as an authority they must personally bow 
to ? Christians ! how many amongst us are Chris- 
tians^ as men might be called philosophers, who, 
while naming Newton always with admiration, 
should yet reserve their interior assent for the very 
paganism of astronomy. 

A religion of facts, we need hardly observe, is 
the onty sort of religion adapted powerfully to affect 
the hearts of the mass of mankind ; for ordinary or 
uncultured minds can neither grasp, nor will care 
for, abstractions of any kind. But then that which 
makes Christianity proper for the many, and indeed 
proper for all, if motives are to be effectively sway- 
ed, renders it a rock of offence to the few who will 
admit nothing that may not be reduced within the 
circle of their favoured generalizations. Such minds, 
therefore, reject Christianity, or hold it in abeyance, 
not because they can disprove it, but because it will 
not be generalized, because it will not be sublima- 
ted, because it will not be touched by the tool of 
reason : because it must remain what it is — an in- 
soluble mass of Facts. In attempting to urge con- 
sistency upon such persons, the advocate of Chris* 



54 O N S P I R I T tJ A t 

lianity makes no progress, and has to return, ever 
and again, to his document, and to ask — Is this true, 
or false ? if true, your metaphysics may be true 
also ; but yet must not give law to your opinions ^ 
much less govern your conduct. 

Resolute as may be the determination of some to 
yield to no such control, nevertheless, if the evan* 
gelio history be true, ^'one is our Master, even 
Christ ;" — He is our Master in abstract speculation 
— our Master in religious belief — our Master in 
morals, and in the ordering of every day's affairs. 

It will readily be admitted that this our first 
position, if it be firm, sweeps away, at a stroke, a 
hundred systems of religion, ancient and modern, 
which either have not professed to rest upon historic 
truth, or which have notoriously failed in making 
good any such pretension. These various schemes 
need not be named ; — they barely merit an enu- 
meration : — they are susceptible of no distinct refu- 
tation ; for they are baseless, powerless, obsolete. 

Say you that Christianity is intolerant in thus 
excluding all other systems ? But must it not be 
exclusive of every other, if it he true ? Let us have 
a religion, willing to walk abreast with other reli- 
gions — religions afl[irming what it denies, and de- 
nying what it aflSrms, when we admit mathemati- 
cal or physical sciences, equally indulgent towards 
what must be purely absurd, if themselves are not 



CHRISTIANITY. 65 

SO ! Yet an exclusive religion is not therefore an 
intolerent one. An intolerant religion, is the reli- 
gion of a sect— and of a sect in fear. 



IL 



Our second proposition, claiming assent, if the 
first be admitted, is. 

That Christianity is a religion of facts 
with which all men, without exception and 
without distinction, and in an equal degree, 
are personally concerned. 

The very opposite characteristic has attached to 
every scheme of natural religion, as well as to 
every corruption of Christianity, from the first cen- 
tury onward ; and it is to be especially noted that, 
just in proportion as such systems, whether pagan 
or nominally Christian, have worn an aspect of ele- 
vation, and have been fraught with moral energy, 
or a power to control the passions, they have, with 
so much the more arrogance, insisted upon, or ta- 
citly assumed the rule of spiritual caste ; and have 
laboured to effect a distribution of men into classes 
— patrician, or plebeian ; — spiritual, or natural, by 
the destination of nature. 

But Christianity is therefore a Spiritual religion, 
and it moves the human heart from its depths, and 



56 ON SPIRITUAL 

confers a substantial dignity upon man, because it 
attaches a sovereign importance to those elements 
of our moral constitution in respect of which the 
natural or the artificial distinctions that subsist be- 
tween man and man, be they what they may, must 
always seem trivial. Christianity addresses men, 
only or chiefly as they stand related to God ; and in 
the presence of the Infinite, of what account are 
the differences of the finite ? 

This characteristic of Christianity — that it pro- 
pounds truth to all, and demands to be considered, 
examined and accepted by men individually, is 
more peculiar than we, in modern times, can easi- 
ly imagine ; for this great principle, given to the 
world by the Gospel, has now so diffused itself 
through the atmosphere of the world of mind, that 
we breathe it unconsciously. But never, until it 
was proclaimed by the Apostles, had it been sur- 
mised, either by Greek or Jew, that Truth, sacred 
Truth, the brightest daughter of the skies, might 
be vulgarized, and offered to the acceptance of the 
mass of mankind. 

In the ancient world. Truth, whether theological 
or physical, was, like the costly perfumes of the 
East, an exquisite luxury, which should be found 
only within marble palaces. But in the modern 
world, and this vast change is attributable mainly to 
the spread of Christianity, truth has become, hke 



CHRISTIANITY. 57 

the very breezes of heaven, common property, and 
is everywhere sweet, salutary, free ; and enjoyed 
with equal zest in the cottage and the palace. 

By no means so strange to the car of the ancient 
world w^as the doctrine of the future life, and of the 
resurrection of the body, as was this doctrine. That 
Truth is every man's concernment, every man's 
right, and every man's most necessary possession. 
The apostolic voice, sounding throughout the an- 
cient world, and calling upon ^' all men everywhere 
to repent, and to believe the Gospel," besides its 
direct religious import, carried an inevitable, though 
latent inference, which has effected the greatest of 
all the revolutions that have marked the intellectual 
condition of mankind. This challenge to repent 
and to believe, awakened in every bosom a sense 
of responsibihty, altogether new ; — putting as it did 
every human being in a position of direct relation- 
ship to God — the Judge of all ; and fixing in the 
minds of all a deep conviction that the difference 
between truth and error, is of infinite consequence 
to men, individually. 

The promulgation of this Christian principle gave 
a death-blow, on the one hand, to despotism, both 
spiritual and civil ; and on the other to sophistry, 
w^hether philosophic or religious. For if every 
man be obliged, as he will answer it to God, to pos- 
sess himself of truth, he must be free ; — free — not 



58 ONSPIRITUAL 

only to think, but to speak ; — free to move ; — free 
to go in quest of truth ; — free to bring it home ; — 
free to confer with his fellows concerning it ; and 
free to impart what he has acquired. 

Again ; if truth be for all, and if it be indispensa- 
ble to each, it must break itself away from the 
erudite frivolities of schools ; and will soon come to 
be discussed among those who neither could use, 
nor would endure, the astute methods of a factitious 
logic. 

It is well known how early, and with what dili- 
gence, and with what variety of devices, those who 
had usurped the direction of the human mind, la- 
boured to put out this candle, and to deny truth 
to all men. These endeavours actually triumphed. 
First, the pernicious '' discipline of the secret," then 
Christianized Gnosticism, then Asceticism, then 
Hierarchical ambition, sealed the Gospel, in their 
turns ; or, we might say, clothed the Sun in sack- 
cloth.'' 

The Lutheran reformation broke in upon this 
mystery of pride, making a new proclamation of 
the apostolic doctrine, that the Gospel, as a system 
of momentous facts, is addressed to man as 7nan, 
and that it concerns all men without distinction. 
Whatever incidental disorders may have attended 

* Some illustrations of these several affirmations will be 
found in a Supplemental Note. 



CHRISTIANITY. 59 

the new promulgation of this animating principle, 
itself is not chargeable with any such irregularities ; 
for to affirm that every man should take heed that 
he knows what is essential to his salvation, surely 
implies no disparagement of the legitimate means of 
conveying truth from those w^ho know more, to those 
who know less. On this ground, our choice is not 
between peace and ignorance, on the one side ; and 
knowledge and license on the other ; but between 
the disorders of ignorance — tending always toward 
anarchy ; and the disorders of knowledge, tending 
always toward a more settled adjustment of ele- 
ments. 

It is evident that, if two religious systems be 
compared, of which the one addresses itself to a 
few, on the ground of certain natural advantages, or 
of some artificial prerogative ; while the other ad- 
dresses all, on ground common to all ; the latter 
must bear, with the greater stress, upon the con- 
science, because it descends deeper into human na- 
ture, and has to do with motives of a wider grasp. 
Christianity is, for this very reason, a spiritual re- 
ligion — that is to say, it is a power touching every 
principle of our nature, and w^orking from the very 
depths of our hearts, because it heeds no distinctions 
among those who are heirs in common of immor- 
tality, are amenable in common to eternal justice, 



60 O N S P I R I T U A L 

and are redeemed, one and all, by the precious 
blood of the same Saviour. 

Within the Christian system, if a few do, in fact, 
reach an eminence not attained by the many, it is 
only by allowing a fuller operation to motives which 
all might properly admit in the very same degree. 

'' Go ye into all the world," said the Lord to his 
ministers — '' Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." Now, the highest 
conception we can form of Spiritual Christianity, 
as embodied in the habits, motives, and conduct of 
men, embraces absolutely nothing beyond what 
must come to be the ordinary feeling of Christians, 
when this commission shall have been completed, 
and when, to '' Christ, every knee shall have bow- 
ed, every tongue have made confession ! " Nor in- 
deed should it be thought possible, that a religion 
destined to be universal, can exhibit the harmony of 
its energies in any single instance, until it has be- 
come so : — it is abroad that the power of the sum- 
mer's sun is felt ; not in the pencils of light that 
enter a darkened chamber. 

We have professed that we shall ask nothing on 
behalf of spiritual religion which does not neces- 
sarily flow from the admission, that Christianity is 
historically true ; but if true, then the commission 
which we have cited to preach the Gospel to every 
creature, is not merely a command to promulgate 



CHRISTIANITY. 61 

sa\dng truth, but an implicit command also, ad- 
dressed to every creature, to receive it. And let it 
be considered that the fact of coming within the 
range of this proclamation can be regarded as an 
indifferent circumstance, only on the supposition 
that the proclamation itself has not issued from a 
Sovereign Power. What may be the future des- 
tiny of the millions of the human family upon 
whose ear this sound has never fallen, it were worse 
than idle to conjecture. Be it what it may, it must 
differ, in a forensic sense, from that of those who 
have heard it. An instantaneous change in a man's 
forensic position, or in liis personal relationship to 
government, is a circumstance not unusual in civil 
affairs ; and more than a few passages of the New 
Testament support the inference that it holds in 
the administration of heaven, and that the mere fact 
of having been formally challenged by heaven to 
repent, draws with it consequences as endless as 
immortality. 

III. 

We thus reach our Third Proposition, which 
is this, That Christianity, as a religion of facts, 

INDUCES A NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND 

HIS Maker. 

A vindictive power, sure of its purpose, gives no 
notice of its approach. But if an absolute Sovereign 
6 



62 ONSPIRITUAL 

encounters the guilty on his path, before the day of 
trial, and challenges his submission, a purpose of 
grace may fairly be inferred from such an act of 
condescension. This condescension however to- 
ward the guilty, does not leave him on the ground 
he previously occupied ; for disobedience thence- 
forward takes the character of contumacy ; and 
continued resistance may then be construed as trea- 
son. The Gospel, even rejected, has therefore 
induced a new and a permanent relationship between 
man and his Creator. 

But how new and intimate is that relationship 
which it induces when the offered reconciliation is 
accepted ! 

It may be well to measure the vastness of the 
interval which has been passed over, when such a 
relationship commences. 

Among the many instances in which truth has 
been, as we might say, furtively obtained from 
Christianity, and made to grace systems not en- 
titled to the credit they confer, is this of the paternal 
relationship assumed to exist between man and his 
Creator. 

On the ground of natural, or as we should say, 
Abstract Theology, the bold assumption of this re- 
lationship can by no means be made good, in a 
satisfactory manner ; unless indeed we assign a 
very vague sense to the phrase, and intend nothing 



CHRISTIANITY. 63 

more by it than a wide benevolence, altogether re- 
gardless of individual welfare ; and which is to be 
traced no further than appears in the beneficent 
operation of general laws. But surely the paternal 
relationship involves much more than this ! 

And let it be considered how vapid and cold, at 
the very best, are any sentiments of devotion which 
rest strictly on the ground of abstract theology. 
Grant it, that the human mind, and especially as 
aided by the discoveries of modern science, does 
hold a sort of communion with the Infinite Mind. 
— Man, with the mechanical aids of modern science 
in his hand, stands on his turret of observation, mid- 
way in the field of the universe — an intelligent 
spectator of the movements of infinite wisdom and 
power ; for it is true that the procedures of the 
infinite mind, are, to the finite mind, of an intelli- 
gible quality. Fitness, that is to say, the adaptation 
of means to an end, is the ground of this intellectual 
correspondence between man and the Creator of 
the world. Yet this correspondence does not merit 
to be designated as a communion ; for it has no re- 
turn. We gaze with delight upon the wonders of 
the universe ; and once and again, perhaps, admira- 
tion bursts aloud from our lips. — We hail the Parent 
of all : — we invoke the ever-present Power, and we 
offer him our homage. But the feeble sounds of 
praise are lost in the vault of heaven ! there is none 



64 ONSPIRITUAL 

to answer us ; there is none to accept the language 
of our hearts ! Mind indeed is before us ; and an 
infinite energy of inteUigence is in movement in our 
view ; but then this Energy works its work, heed- 
ing us not. It is seen upholding systems incalcu- 
lably remote ; and again it takes its circuit near 
to the very ground on w^hich we stand ; and we 
trace, with our microscope, the infinite Power, at 
work in the herbage beneath our feet. But toward 
us this Power — this Intelligence — this Goodness, 
is ever silent. Although, by abstract reasoning, we 
may have convinced ourselves that the creative 
power must be at every moment, and everywhere 
in operation, yet, so far as appears, or if we consult 
only our instinctive impressions, we might believe 
the vast frame-work of nature to be the forgot- 
ten product of a Power which long ago had taken 
its departure from its finished mechanism, and 
which will never return ; and is now occupied on 
some field of exercise immensely remote ! 

A mournful sense of the want of reciprocity be- 
longs to those emotions with which, when uirtaught 
by revelation, Man contemplates the order and 
beauty of the universe. Nor is this the whole of 
om* disadvantage, in a religious view ; for, eager 
and ratiocinative as is the human mind, it cannot 
but happen that, in our contemplations of nature, 
considered as the work of the Creator, the pre- 



CHRISTIANITY, 65 

mises should engage more attention than the con- 
clusion. And it is more and more so, in proportion 
as science becomes less theoretic and more exact ; 
less a matter of sentiment, and more of calculation ; 
less a delight of our leisure, and more the arduous 
occupation of our lives. What, in fact, is the the- 
ology of natural philosophy, but a formal in- 
ference, which courtesy demands to be noted on the 
closing page of a treatise, and which we have post- 
poned to that page, lest it should interrupt, even 
for a moment, the eager course of our inquiries ? 

In the hope of getting near to the Deity, on some 
other path than that, either of philosophy, or of the 
Christian revelation, the Mystic, patiently enduring 
the hunger and thirst of the soul for divine refresh- 
ments, goes on a pilgrimage over a sandy desert in 
search of the temple of God, which he supposes 
somewhere to be discoverable on earth, but which 
he never finds. Mysticism, without the animation 
of philosophy, and barren of its rational inferences, 
gathers no vital warmth in its endless circuits of 
meditation ; nor can it, any more than philosophy, 
pretend to enjoy an affectionate communion with 
the Infinite Mind. The Mystic sits in silent ex- 
pectation, from day to day, from year to year, upon 
the steps of the royal palace ; but never yet has 
he exchanged a smile of recognition with the 
Sovereign. 

6* 



66 ONSPIRITUAL 

How different is that communion of the heart 
with God which Christianity opens before us ! The 
Christian, looking on the right to philosophy, on the 
left to mysticism ; — looking on all sides in search 
of any who may compete with him, says, with a 
cordial animation, '' Truly our communion is with 
the Father." 

Either we ourselves must have very cold pa- 
rental feelings, or w^e allow ourselves a very im- 
proper application of the word — Father, to the su- 
preme benevolence, when what we actually intend 
by it is nothing more than that comprehensive good- 
ness from which all creatures, in their several ranks, 
draw their supplies ; and which is equally rich in 
its bounty toward the conscious, and the uncon- 
scious, toward the grateful, and the ungrateful ; 
toward the pious, and toward the wicked. 

What then is — paternal love ? It is not the sim- 
ple benevolence of a superior toward the dependent 
beings who may sit at the same board. No, a 
Father's love is a fondness for the persons indu 
vidually^ and severally, of his family : it is pecuUar, 
it is indestructible, it is not diminished toward each, 
in being shared by many ; it is whole and entire for 
for each. It is a concentrated desire for the 
well-being of each singly ; — a desire carried for- 
ward through all the details of family nurture and 
provision. A Father's love grasps the object of its 
love, nor quits its hold ; nor consents to substitute 



CHRISTIANITY. 67 

one object of fondness for another. Nor merely so ; 
for not content in securing the good of its object, 
it looks for, nor can dispense with, a warm return 
of the same personal fondness. Is a Father satisfied 
in providing a fortune for his children, and in send- 
ing them well abroad, just as a legal guardian 
might do ? A Father must have a reciprocity of 
love, or he is not happy. The heart of a Father 
yearns to receive, every day, the undoubted ex- 
pressions of filial affection. 

Is then God our Father? The Gospel declares 
it, as a fundamental truth ; and in opening up, by 
instances, the import of this declaration, it shows 
that this language of sacred affection is to be under- 
stood, not in a sense lowered and vague, as com- 
pared w4th that which it bears in its ordinary ac- 
ceptation ; but in a sense of incalculably greater 
intensity and depth. 

Genuine piety commences at the moment when 
the love of our heavenly Father towards ourselves 
individually, as his children, is distinctly recognised. 
The earliest movements of the new life of the soul 
take this very character. '' As many as are led by 
the Spirit of God," they are taught that they are 
" the sons of God," and find that they have not 
received " the spirit of bondage again, to fear ;" 
but ^' the spirit of adoption," whereby they invoke 
God as their Father. '' The Spirit itself bearing 



68 ONSPI RITUAL 

witness with their spirits, that they are the children 
of God." 

It is this filial sentiment — the peculiarity of Chris- 
tian piety, which brightens the enjoyments of life, 
even the most common of them, with a sense that, in 
our obscure homes, we are sitting, from day to day, 
at the board which our heavenly Father has spread. 
It is this feeling which mitigates and sanctifies af- 
fliction ; wherein, even when the sharpest, we dis- 
cern a token of the truth that God is '^ dealing with 
us as with sons," and is in fact preparing us for our 
home. It is this same affection — the distinct fihal 
sentiment, which dispels the terrors of death ; while 
the Christian believes that the Father of spirits is 
removing a member of his family from a less to a 
more desirable abode. 

If Christian principles be thoroughly admitted, 
the Christian's home, even under these inclement 
skies, differs but in circumstance from the mansion 
preparing for him above. "If a man love me," 
said Jesus to his disciples, " he will keep my words, 
and my Father will love him, and we will come 
unto him, and will make our abode with him." 

The intimate and affectionate relationship opened 
between the individual Christian and his heavenly 
Father finds its field of exercise in two principles 
very decisively pronounced in the inspired writings, 
as well of the Old as of the New Testament : — we 



CHRISTIANITY. 69 

mean the doctrine of a particular providence, and 
that of the proper efficacy of prayer, in relation to 
the ordinary events of life. It is easy to see in 
what manner a cordial belief of these principles 
tends to give vivacity and intensity to the religious 
aifections ; for it is thus that the very same world 
of cares, fears, hopes, which tends to obliterate the 
moral sentiments of other men, becomes, to the 
affectionate Christian, an efficacious discipline of 
faith and love. 

We have named as two^ the doctrines of a par- 
ticular providence, and of the efficacy of prayer, 
though in fact they are only two expressions of one 
great truth. Both are so explicitly taught in the 
Old and New Testament, and both are so amply 
confirmed by precept and example, and so much 
of what is called Christian experience hinges upon 
both, that the truth of Christianity itself may seem 
to be staked upon the certainty of them ; nor can 
it be doubted that, with many cultured minds, a 
factitious difficulty believed to be fatal to both, has 
had much influence in keeping ahve a painful un- 
certainty, or a reserved scepticism on the subject 
of rehgion. For if it be thought absolutely impos- 
sible to reconcile a belief in the efficacy of prayer, 
either with the operation of general laws, or with 
the dogma of necessity, or even with the Christian 
doctrine of the divine foreknowledge and predesti- 



70 ONSPIRITUAL 

nation of events, how shall we believe Christianity 
itself to be true ? 

To hide from themselves the formidable front of 
this difficulty, some, with amazing inconsideration, 
and in violation of the clearest axioms of abstract 
science, have taken refuge in the supposition of a 
controlling providence in respect to great events, 
and none in respect of small ; as if mountains might 
be subject to one law of gravitation, and mole-hills 
to another ; or as if it were possible to make good 
any philosophical distinction between great events 
and small ; or as if a great event were any thing 
else than a congeries of small events, regarded as 
one only in relation to certain consequences thence 
resulting ! Or some will persuade themselves — to 
such confusions of thought are we liable, that the 
divine providence comes in, at times, to avert the con- 
sequences which must result from its own general 
laws, were they left to take their customary course ! 
What a conception is this of infinite wisdom as 
employed in the government of the world ! Should 
we think well of a mechanist who, in any such 
manner, should have to put his hand to his work ? 

On the other hand there are" those who, coolly 
regarding the notion of a particular providence, and 
of the efficacy of prayer, as illusions, or vulgar 
prejudices, and yet finding it impossible to rid them- 
selves, as professed Christians, of the dut}?- of prayer, 



CHRISTIANITY. 71 

resort to a supposition, equally vapid and prepos- 
terous, That the sole efficacy, or reason of prayer, 
turns upon its reflex, or secondary influence upon 
the mind of the worshipper, as an expression of the 
devout aff*ections. As if reasonable men might be 
persuaded to continue, with sincere earnestness, 
any exercise whatever, which was well understood 
to be destitute of all direct utility ! A notion such 
as this resembles the supposition that we might 
continue to enjoy the accommodation of moonlight, 
even if the sun were blotted from the planetary 
system ! A reflective influence may indeed be of 
very high importance ; but it must suppose always 
the reality of a direct influence. 

In thus venturing to speak of the diflftculties 
attaching to these doctrines as factitious, we are 
not chargeable with the presumption of undertaking 
to make intelhgible the intricate movements of the 
moral universe. It is not indeed given to man to 
penetrate these ; yet it is always within his power, 
and therefore it is his duty, to dispel any confusion 
that may belong to his modes of thinking, by a 
stricter analysis of the notions over which he has 
a perfect command. We do not hesitate to affirm 
then, that, whatever seeming difficulty besets our 
Christian faith, on this ground, it is easily removable 
by the methods of analysis, as applied to abstract 
thought. 



72 ONSPIRITUAL 

To enter upon any such analysis, on the present 
occasion, were out of place. Nevertheless, on the 
ground of a careful consideration of the subject, we 
must profess to beheve the doctrine of a particular 
providence, and of the proper efficacy of prayer 
—inseparably connected as they are with the fer- 
vour of Christian piety, to be liable to no solid 
objection. 

It is amid the vivid alternations of joy and sorrow, 
and under what may be called the homely discipline 
of the Christian's daily course, and as animated by 
the behef of the truths to which we have just 
alluded, that the devout affections are cherished, 
and are rendered at once keen and profound ; while, 
by the very admixture of ingredients drawn from 
the passing interests of earth, extravagance is 
excluded, and a simple practical air is given to the 
religious life. 

It will not be forgotten that the intimate filial 
relationship which the Christian scheme estabhshes 
between man and his Maker, results from, and is 
inseparably connected with the mediation of Christ. 
Being '* reconciled through him, we have access unto 
the Father ; " and a fixed principle is it, rendered 
unalterable, at once by the Divine sanctity, and the 
polluted condition of man, that ^' no man cometh 
unto the Father" — none can claim the privileges of 
sonship, but ^' by the Son" — through his interces- 



CHRISTIANITY. 73 

sion, and as the consequence of his propitiatory 
death. 

This great truth, adverted to in this place, lest 
we should seem forgetful of what is so peculiarly 
a Christian doctrine, will demand to be considered 
more distinctly hereafter. At present we have to 
do with the fact merely, and to which we direct 
especial attention, constituting as it does one of the 
most marked of the visible characteristics of Chris- 
tianity — and one which removes to a wide distance 
every other system of religion, whether claiming 
to be Christian, or not. 

It is remarkable that our Lord, while abstaining 
from a distinct enunciation of that scheme of re:- 
demption which, before his death and resurrection, 
remained incomplete ; yet invariably, when ad- 
dressing his sincere followers, encouraged them to 
look with affectionate confidence to " his Father, 
and their Father ;" and when interpreting his own 
language, in this behalf, by apologues, he left them 
no room to doubt that they were to believe them- 
selves individually the objects of the Divine care 
and love. 

Previously therefore to any inquiry as to the 

Truths peculiar to Christianity, this intimate and 

affectionate relationship established between man 

and his Maker, as reconciled through Christ, pre- 

7 



74 ONSPIRITUAL 

sents itself to our notice, and should be regarded 
as a prominent feature of the Christian system. 

Will it be said that our Lord, or his Apostles, 
give encouragement, in any way, to an unhallowed 
familiarity in our approaches to God ; or that the 
reverence due to the infinite Majesty is infringed 
by them ? Certainly not. The contrary is most 
evident. We see then that, according to the idea 
of the Christian system, the deepest reverence is 
still compatible with an affectionate and filial con- 
fidence, involving the belief that the individual 
Christian is the object of a paternal regard. 

On what scheme this adjustment of reverence 
and affection may be accomplished, is an after 
question. We now merely state the fact, and 
appeal to it as a most striking proof, at once of the 
spirituality, and of the benign tendency of the 
Gospel, and of its immeasurable superiority to 
every other rehgious system, whether contemplative 
or superstitious. 

Within the entire range of antiquity we meet 
with absolutely nothing that approaches this charac- 
teristic Christian feeling ; — except indeed what we 
find in the Old Testament, and especially the 
Psalms. And as to the several perversions of 
Christianity, from the first century to the present 
time, they stand condemned, one and all, by this 
very test, if by no other. 



CHRISTIANITY. 75 

So far as such systems have leaned toward intel- 
lectuahty and abstraction, they have in the same 
degree excluded the warmth and simplicity of 
Christian piety. While such as have been marked 
by a tendency to superstition, have, as uniformly, 
and as completely, removed the worshipper to a 
distance, where dread and anxiety must prevail 
over every happier sentiment. Or if, under any 
such systems, the fanatic has broken through these 
restraints, he has drawn near to the throne not with 
calm filial affection, but with the effrontery of an 
evil spirit. 

Let this one test be applied to that scheme of 
pietism which, in imitation of the style of antiquity, 
is at this moment, and wuth so much diligence and 
success, propagated around us. This restored su- 
perstition is in part poetic and imaginative ; — in part 
it is ritual and servile. That is to say — according 
to the constitution of minds, it is either a mild and 
picturesque enthusiasm, or a stern and severe fana- 
ticism ; — both meeting within the same ritual forms, 
and worshipping beneath the same roof. 

Now, as to the first of these species of pietism, it 
is a principle of human nature, well understood, that 
the genuine v/orkings of the heart are in no manner 
more effectively repressed and excluded than when 
they become transmuted into the illusive form of a 
poetic enthusiasm. g^What is general benevolence — 



76 ON SPIRITUAL 

what is friendship — what is fihal love, when they 
shde off into lomantic sentiment ? — nothing better 
are they than shining exhalations — false and cold ! 
Attractive as may be this imaginative guise of piety, 
it is not the piety — it is not the filial love of the 
Christian system ; and where the one is cherished 
the other disappears. 

As to the stern, or fanatical species of supersti- 
tious piety — that of the emaciated devotee, we need 
hardly say that, as well the theological notions 
whence it takes its rise, as the temper it generates, 
are equally incompatible with the principles and 
with the spirit of that life-giving piety which our 
Lord's discourses tend to cherish. 



IV. 



We have said — That Christianity is a rehgion 
not of notions, but of Facts :. — That in these facts 
all men have the same, and the deepest concern- 
ment, and, That a cordial admission of them as 
true, induces a new and intimate relationship be- 
tween man and his Maker. We have then to 
assume our ultimate position, in thus considering 
the exterior characteristics of the Christian scheme ; 
and it is this — 

That the Facts of Christianity, when ad- 



CHRISTIANITY. 77 

MITTED AS TRUE, ARE OF A KIND TO EXCITE, AND 
TO MAINTAIN IN ACTIVITY, THE WARMEST AND THE 
MOST PROFOUND EMOTIONS OF WHICH MEN ARE SUS- 
CEPTIBLE, ACCORDING TO THE INDIVIDUAL CONSTI- 
TUTION OF THEIR MINDS. 

A vastly higher amount of rehgious feeHng than 
that whidi ordinarily entitles a man, by the world's 
courtesy, to the designation of an enthusiast, may 
yet be rigorously defended, as still falling short of 
what the nature of the case would justify. He is 
an enthusiast, surely — not who feels strongly on an 
occasion which would justify feelings much more 
intense ; but he whose emotions, whether more or 
less acute, are spurious ; that is to say, are not of 
the quality which the occasion demands ; and 
whose sentiments want heart, truth, proportion. A 
man is no enthusiast who, with an intensity of min- 
gled love and fear, rushes forward to rescue a wife 
and children from imminent peril. But we hold in 
contempt one who, at such a moment, should think 
to act the hero, and save his family with eclat. 
We blame him, not for feeling too much ; but for 
feeling too little ; and this is indeed always the 
fault of the enthusiast, and of the fanatic too ; and 
even when his spurious passions mount to the high- 
est pitch. 

The wild extravagance of the enthusiast, or of 
the fanatic, and the torpor of the formalist, although 
7* 



78 ON SPIRITUAL 

to the eye they may range as extremes, are, m 
truth, only varieties of the same lethargy of the 
moral faculties. Let the enthusiast and the formal- 
ist be both awakened to a cordial belief of the facts 
of Christianity, and the difference between the two 
will almost disappear. 

But now, the objects of religious belief — the facts 
of Christianity, being in themselves of boundless 
range, and our personal concernment with them 
being of incalculable moment, whither, it may be 
asked, shall we be carried, if, with such impulses 
around us, w^e fully surrender ourselves to their 
influence ? " After all," says the objector, " is not 
Christianity a religion of sobriety and reason?" 
Assuredly it is so, and it is so because its seat is in 
the moral faculties, which are never profoundly 
moved, but when they are moved tranquilly. The 
characteristic of the affections is depth, not visible 
agitation. 

It is on this very ground that Christianity tri- 
umphs, as compared with every other religious sys- 
tem,, ancient or modern, which has powerfully 
affected the human mind. These systems, so far 
as they have been powerful, at all, have been reli- 
gions of agitation. Christianity, on the contrary,, 
so far as it is effectual for its own purposes, is a 
religion of affection and habit, not of passionate 
commotion. Every powerful religion, Christianity 



CHRISTIANITY. 79 

excepted, has been either wild or sullen : and the 
same is true of every corruption of Christianity 
itself, in all the wide circuit of delusions, commen- 
cing with the ascetic frenzy, and ending in the base 
superstition of the middle ages. If asceticism be 
tranquil, it is tranquil by apathy : if superstition be 
tranquil, it is tranquil by the constraint of dread ; 
but Christianity is at once tranquil and happy. If 
enthusiasm have its ecstasies, it is only joyous, so 
far as it is also unsound. 

The very characteristic of a genuine warmth of 
affection, is, that it is so calm, as to be liable to the 
control of reason. Unreasonable affection, or a 
doating fondness, is just so much the less constant 
and profound, as it is less under command. To 
feel intensely — to feel keenly — to feel with so sove- 
reign a force of emotion, as may carry a man through 
any labours or sacrifices, for the sake of one be- 
loved, is only another description of moral serenity. 
This even balance of the mind, means nothing less 
than a balance of great forces. We are not used 
to speak of the equilibrium of a straw ; but we do 
speak of that of the engine-beam which vibrates 
silently, with a sort of omnipotence. 

Single out an instance of a heart susceptible, 
more than others, of a tender and self-renouncing 
affection. Does not that chosen heart — one of a 
thousand, float in the midst of a tranquil tempera- 



80 ONSPIRITUAL 

ment ? Is not the beauty of an unruffled surface 
its characteristic grace, and its very symbol ? What, 
in truth, is love, but the equipoise of the moral and 
intellectual faculties ? and the emotions are then 
the most intense, when every faculty, moral and 
intellectual, has found its place of rest around that 
centre. 

Christianity for this very reason, is a religion of 
sobriety, and a religion of self-control, because it 
is a religion of love, intense, and deep. 

" Why," it is often petulantly asked — " Why, if 
the issues of the present life are of infinite extent, 
why are we so much restricted in our knowledge of 
the future world ? Why is it only a vague report 
of the awful futurity that reaches the ear of man ? 
Why is not the curtain of the invisible world some- 
times lifted?" We do not undertake to furnish 
what might be the most direct reply to such a ques- 
tion ; but we may, with confidence, give a reply, 
which we hold to be suflScient. 

If the present life be indeed a season of moral 
discipline, and an exercise of those affections which 
are, in their nature, of a tranquil order, then un^ 
doubtedly must the mind be screened, during the 
season of this exercise, from the impulse of im- 
pressions which would at once overwhelm them-. 
You say, " Let me see the invisible ; lift the cur*- 
tain of the grave." But would you risk tho con*- 



CHRISTIANITY. 81 

sequences of such a discovery, even as it might 
affect the physical structure of the mind ? Cer- 
tainly the discipline of the heart, after such a reve- 
lation, w^ould not be what now it is. By the mere 
guidance of our moral sentiments — our habitual 
emotions, we are to make our choice, on trying oc- 
casions, between virtue and vice ; but this choice 
would obey another and a very different law, if we 
had actually seen the one in its native condition — 
eternally wedded to happiness ; and the other in 
the grasp of misery. 

If it be said, that the having heard a vague report 
of things future does not supply motives strong 
enough to fortify the frailty of human nature, ex- 
posed as it is to cruel temptations ; we fully grant 
it : truly it is not a listless hearing of these things, 
or a vague belief of them, that will give effect to 
Christianity. What we have spoken of is a cordial 
belief of the Christian verities ; and such a belief 
is not to be expected to come in upon the mind 
unsought for, and undesired. 

Christianity professes to be a preparation for 
heaven. What then is heaven ? or what must we 
suppose to be the conditions of a permanent and 
ultimate felicity intended for beings constituted like 
ourselves, and moreover, '' far gone, as w^e are, 
from original righteousness ?" 

In offering a reply to this question, we shall not 



82 ONSPIRITUAL 

advance a step on the ground of mere conjecture ; 
but shall confine ourselves to that which lies clearly 
within the range of reasonable, nay, of inevitable 
anticipations. 

We ask then, first, are there to be sensitive-'plea- 
sures, in a future state — secondary enjoyments, 
analogous to the pleasures of sense in the present 
state ? Let it for a moment be granted that there 
may be such ; yet it is certain that, if heaven be a 
world of progressive or upward-tending virtue,' the 
bent of all minds must be toward enjoyments of a 
higher class than these : for a tendency downwards, 
or only an inert disposition ta rest on the level of 
sensitive pleasure, can be nothing but sensuality, 
whether found on earth or in heaven. 

In heaven, that is in a world of permanent and 
progressive happiness, if there be at once higher 
and lower sources of enjoyment, the higher must 
always be held in chief esteem ; and there must be 
a tendency toward them in all who themselves are 
to be permanently and progressively happy. 

But now, shall we further imagine heaven to 
draw a portion of its delights from the purer sources 
of intellectual occupation — the pleasures of reason, 
in the acquisition, and communication of knowl- 
edge ? If so, then sensitive pleasure must subside 
to a lower level ; for if not, the inferior would be 
chosen in the presence of what is confessedly bet- 



CHRISTIANITY. 83 

ter; and such a choice is not merely unwise, but 
essentially vicious. 

Man however is formed for action, still more than 
either for passive enjoyment, or for mere contem- 
plation. He is so constituted that the sense of 
enjoyment arising from the exercise of the active 
faculties is of a far more vivid and commanding 
sort than even the choicest pleasures of intellect. 
Let but a high field of action be opened before 
human minds, and towards it will rush the major- 
ity; if not all. Are great things doing? the 
frivolous leave their amusements — Elysian leisure 
is broken up ; and even philosophers leave the 
stars to roll on while they come to take a part in, 
or to witness great actions. The supremacy of the 
active and moral faculties is attested by this tenden- 
cy to forget and abandon every other kind of 
enjoyment, when great enterprises are in progress. 

And yet it is not action, merely ; but action, 
prompted by lofty motives, and tending toward 
vast results, affecting the well-being of multitudes, 
that sways the human mind, in a sovereign manner, 
and draws all toward one centre, as to a vortex. 

But now what idea have we been used to enter- 
tain of a future state ? If w^e exclude the terrific 
supposition of a world of anarchy — the chaos of 
discordant wills — if we think of heaven as a world 
of happiness, and therefore of absolute order, yet 



84 ONSPIRITUAL 

of high activity, it must be, not merely a sphere of 
vast movements, and of the development of mo- 
tives deep and intense but of actions and movements 
openly and constantly controlled by the Supreme 
Wisdom and Goodness. Heaven— a happy futurity, 
and as contrasted with earth, must be thought of as 
God's visible kingdom, or his direct administration 
of the intelligent universe. 

Heaven must be a sphere wherein whatever is 
good, and wise, and just, is carried forward triumph- 
antly, and amid the joyful acclamations of all. And 
vet it must be a world in which the series of events, 
as they are portions of a succession which is 
infinite, may often fail to be intelligible to finite 
minds. What then follows ? — That a demand will 
as often be made upon the loyalty, and the devout 
submission of such minds. This is an inevitable 
supposition : the occupants of heaven, if they are 
to be constantly happy, must first have learned so 
to love God, under circumstances of perplexity 
and trial, as may fit them to pass forward on the 
high road of duty, with reverent afiection, and with 
unshaken constancy, whether or not the actual 
aspect of affairs may consist with their notions of 
sovereign goodness, and wisdom. It does not 
appear how we can exclude suppositions such as 
these from our anticipations of a happy futurity. 

Are we prepared to throw up the hope of immor- 



CHRISTIANITY. 85 

tality ? If not, and if we allow ourselves distinctly to 
forecast what must be its conditions, under the 
sway of the attributes of an Infinite Being, we are 
compelled to grant that beings, such as ourselves, 
and if undisciplined by Christianity, must have 
many lessons yet to learn before it is possible that 
we should take part in the felicity of heaven. We 
have to learn to be happy in the only manner in 
which happiness can be rendered permanent and 
progressive to intelligent and moral agents. But 
what is Christianity 1 It is the very schooling 
which we feel that we need in preparation for shar- 
ing in the only happiness possible to be enjoyed. 

If we look around, Christianity stands forward, 
by the open or implicit confession of all, as a 
heavenward tendency : — it is indeed the only move- 
ment on earth, setting toward a world of peace, 
justice, purity, and love. Or if, looking upward, 
we compel ourselves to rest upon the conception of 
a state of permanent felicity — of holy energy, and 
affection, we must feel that we need that culture of 
the purest emotions w^hich the Gospel, and it alone 
supphes. 

The Spiritual Christianity then, concerning 
w^hich, as to its elements, we are yet more parti- 
cularly to inquire, is nothing but Heaven's training 
of fallen man, for its own happiness. 

In concluding the present Lecture we invite a 
8 



86 ON SPIRITUAL 

candid admission of the following affirmations — not 
one of which, singly, can, as we think, be denied, 
and which yet, in their connection, embrace all that 
we mean to advance in behalf of Spiritual Chris- 
tianity. 

We assume as granted, the first principles of 
natural (or more properly) Abstract Theology, and 
the belief of a future life : we then say — That the 
happiness of a- future life must consist in the activi- 
ty of the benign emotions, as the impulses of a 
course of progressive virtue and beneficence. 

That a true religion, considered as a preparation 
for future happiness, must possess this character- 
istic, that it is at once pure in its ethical principles, 
and that it makes provision for the culture of the 
benign emotions, in a manner at once efficacious 
and happy. 

We then affirm, what must surely be conceded, 
that no positive religious system, now extant (and 
not Christian) can pretend to make any such pro- 
vision for a future state of purity and felicity ; and 
moreover, that — 

No system of philosophical deism makes such a 
provision ; for even if its ethical principles were 
pure, yet, as it rests upon no ground of positive 
evidence, and can never be more than an opinion, 
it does but feebly affect even the few who are the 
most favourably disposed to yield to such an influ- 



CHRISTIANITY. 87 

ence — and does not at all affect the mass of man- 
kind. In fact, no scheme of philosophical deism 
has ever exerted a powerful and salutary influence 
over the conduct of men. 

Christianity then has no rival, considered as a 
positive religion — claiming authority — pure in its 
ethical principles, and making a provision for the 
culture of the benign emotions as a preparation for 
the happiness of a future state. 

But further. — In looking to Christianity under 
the aspect now mentioned, we must exclude first, 
those systems called Christian, the obvious inten- 
tion of which is to reduce it to as near a resemblance 
as possible to philosophical deism, by rejecting 
whatever is most peculiar to it : — and we do so, 
because Christianity, when thus reduced, becomes 
as powerless and vapid as deism itself : — it ceases 
to be a positive or authoritative system, and takes 
a place, quiescently, among mere schemes of opi- 
nion. 

On the other hand, w^e must exclude as not 
Christian, although called so, those systems which, 
running in a direction opposite to the philosophic 
scheme, are of a servile character, and of abject 
tendency ; and which, instead of giving an active 
and happy expansion to the affections, either be- 
numb the moral faculties by dread and perplexity, 
or lull the conscience by formalities. 



88 ON SPIRITUAL, ETC. 



In a word, we reject as unchristian, on the one 
side, Rationahsm ; and on the other, Superstition. 

We then stand clear to advance the unrivalled 
claims of the Gospel as being — 

A positive and authoritative religion, resting upon 
Facts that are incontrovertible. 

A religion pure in its ethical principles. 

A religion which gives the fullest and happiest 
expansion to the benign emotions, by opening be- 
fore us a ground of intimate, affectionate, and yet 
reverential communion with God. 

What those great Truths are on which this com- 
munion must rest, it will be our part, in the next 
Lecture, to inquire. 



THE 



SECOND LE CTURE 



ON THE TRUTHS PECULIAR TO SPIRITUAL 
CHRISTIANITY. 



8* 



SECOND LECTURE. 



Standing clear as we do of party entanglements, 
and therefore free from the solicitudes of contro- 
versy, we must not affect either to be ignorant of 
the now peculiar position of religious opinions, or 
indifferent as to the result of what may so well be 
called a crisis in the religious history of this 
country. 

We think it neither desirable, nor indeed possible, 
to treat the momentous subjects now before us, irre- 
spectively of the great controversy of the times. 
We must of necessity allude to this controversy, 
frequently ; nor can we profess a philosophic neu- 
trality in relation to questions on the determination 
of which, as we confidently believe, the rehgious, 
and, by consequence, the political and social well- 
being of this and other countries depends. 

Disclaiming therefore indifference or neutrahty, 
we yet hope, in this and the following Lectures, to 
give evidence of a conscientious impartiality ; and 



92 ONSPIRITUAL 

SO to speak as shall justify our profession of being 
the champions of no party. 

We are then to speak of the Truths which are 
peculiar to Spiritual Christianity ; and therefore in 
regard, as well to brevity, as to controversial justice, 
we must not include any truths, important as they 
may be in themselves, which it shares in common, 
either with natural theology, or with what we are 
compelled to regard as a mutilated Christianity. 

Moreover, we must set off, from our enumeration, 
on this occasion, certain articles of belief, clearly 
attested indeed by Christ and his Apostles ; but 
which are not properly elements of the Gospel. 
True indeed they may be, but they are more ancient 
than Christianity ; they would have been true had 
it never appeared ; and they must remain so, were 
it to be withdrawn. 

A due regard to the unsullied brightness of the 
Christian system demands this distinction to be 
made, and to be much regarded, between certain 
articles which it assumes to be true, but which are 
not of its substance. 

The advocates of Christianity, too often, as we 
think, have burthened themselves with the task of 
obviating difficulties connected with these extra- 
neous articles of belief, which, so far as they may 
be substantial, press, not upon the religion of the 
Bible, but rather upon the first principles of natural 



CHRISTIANITY. 93 

theology. It is certain that Christianity neither 
aggravates any burthen that had previously rested 
upon the lot of man ; nor imposes any new burthen. 
What the inspired w^riter says of the Divine Being 
himself, may be said of the word of his grace — ^^ It 
is LIGHT, and in it is no darkness at all.^' So far 
as any such burthens admit of being either allevi- 
ated, or removed, the whole tendency of Christian- 
ity is to lessen their weight, or to exempt us alto- 
gether from their pressure. 

For example : — Our Lord and the Apostles ap- 
peal, with confidence, to those convictions of every 
human bosom which declare that man is liable to 
the Divine displeasure, and which give a foreboding 
of judgment to come. They reprove the sin and 
perversity of men with all boldness, on the ground 
of these admitted truths ; and they draw the prompt 
and necessary conclusion from the fact of that sad 
degeneracy of human nature which is seen every- 
where, is felt always, and is acknov^ledged, as often 
as pride is remanded, for a moment, by compunc- 
tion or remorse. 

That man is indeed *^ far gone from original 
righteousness," and that he neither loves God, nor 
desires the knowledge of him ; and that, abandoned 
to his ow^n principles and resources, he is destitute, 
helpless, and without hope ; and that he is visibly 
tending toward an after state of still more open 



94 ON SPIRITUAL 

alienation from God — these melancholy truths, 
anterior to Christianity, are so assumed in the 
Christian system that there can be no liberty to call 
them in question by any who jaeld their faith to its 
authority. — They are, in fact, the very ground-work 
of that structure of mercy which is properly called 
— THE Gospel : — nevertheless they are not of its 
substance. 

Our Lord affirms with distinctness that which, if 
thoroughly believed, must alarm our fears to the 
utmost. This affirmation is his ; hut not the fact. 
The affirmation does but give an articulate form to 
that which may properly be called a universal fore- 
boding of the human family. If it be said that 
such dark anticipations rest upon no positive evi- 
dence ; yet, and prevalent as they are, they must 
be granted to possess a dim substantiality, upon 
which our Lord's assertions throw a steady light ; 
and we feel them to be real." 

Such is the belief, with all its appalling conse- 
quences, that the human race has fallen under the 
usurped sway of an invisible and malignant power — 
the ancient enemy of God — the outlaw of heaven, 
the author of error ; — first the seducer, and then the 
tormentor of his victims. 

A dark belief indeed is this ! but we gain very 
little by rejecting it, so long as the human family 
remains as far from virtue as from happiness, nor 



CHRISTIANITY. 95 

indicating any tendency to a return. So long as 
superstitions the most frightful, with their unmiti- 
gated horrors, continue to press, age after age, upon 
the larger portion of mankind, we do but shift a 
difficulty, not remove it, by denying the agency of 
an invisible enemy. 

This belief, whispered in all nations, is uttered 
aloud wherever superstition has long ruled without 
a check. In half civilized and savage countries, 
the infernal agency flares upon our sight ; and, if 
we would be thoroughly equitable, ought we not to 
acknowledge, that, in civihzed countries, indications 
to the same efl'ect are not ambiguous. May it not 
be more than surmised that the author of mischief 
who walks abroad with noisy pomp in pagan lands, 
keeps house among ourselves, and goes softly ? 

Is it affirmed to be a blasphemy to suppose that 
there can be a Satan within the bounds of God's 
universe ? Alas ! how many Tamerlanes, in an- 
cient and in modern times, have shown us that we 
are not at liberty to reason in this manner ! ^' The 
beauty and beneficent intention of creation," it is 
said, *' rebuke the dogma of a personal Evil prin- 
ciple." But we ask, Why there may not be a 
Satan, if there be on earth tyrant tormentors, ma- 
lignant calumniators, and avowed enemies of peace, 
order, and purity ? '' Beneath the fair vault of 
heaven," you say, ^* there can be no agent of mi- 



96 ONSPIRITUAL 

sery ; or no sphere for his mahce, if there were 
one. — Look between decks of a slave ship, and 
tell us why there may not be a Satan. Alas ! the 
darkest surmises of superstition have been only 
exaggerations of the things of earth ! And the hor- 
rid descriptions which deform the Koran are but 
wild dreams of things which have been actually 
transacted ^on earth ! When we go about ingeni- 
ously to trace the origin of the belief in an infernal 
world, to the horrors of eastern despotism, what do 
we but exhibit incontestable proofs that, notwith- 
standing the goodness of God, such a world maybe ? 

Under the very same conditions stands the doc- 
trine of future punishment. The Saviour of the 
world vouches for the truth of this — the instinctive 
belief of the human race. He speaks of the '' wrath 
to come," and solenmly warns us to escape from it. 
But is he therefore our enemy ? or is Christianity 
to be blamed on this account ? First let us be sure 
that the alarm it gives is groundless ; for if it be 
well founded, assuredly the Gospel is '' good news." 
That sort of infatuation which impels us to vent 
upon an innocent messenger, our vexation on hear- 
ing ill tidings, attaches to us when we resent the 
Gospel, because it involves the belief of the terrible 
retributions of the future world. 

In the present instance, after having fully admit- 
ted that the inspired writings allow us no liberty to 



CHRISTIANITY. 97 

call in question the articles we have mentioned, we 
protest against the common error of loading reve- 
lation with the weight of them. If they be denied, 
the Gospel itself has no reason ; and wherever they 
have been denied, it has thrown oS its characteris- 
tics of intensity and seriousness. 

Moreover, certain of the most sacred truths of 
religion must not be claimed as peculiar to Spiritual 
Christianity, inasmuch as they have long consisted 
with the most serious corruptions of its purity. 
Thus must we say that orthodoxy, although essen- 
tial to Christianity, is yet, of itself, not Christianity. 
A fact indeed it is that churches which have de- 
clined from orthodoxy, or that have only wavered 
concerning it, have, without an exception, lost the 
warmth of religious feeling, as well as the purity 
of religious practice ; and after making a few de- 
scents, have walked forth upon the broad level of 
deism, compromising almost the very name of 
Christian. 

If therefore it were asked, ^^ Is a trinitarian faith 
of much importance to practical piety ?" we should 
be content to say — trace the history, either of indi- 
viduals, or of churches, that have renounced it, and 
you will find an answer. A trinitarian faith, clear 
of every evasion, and excluding, even the disposition 
9 



98 ON SPIRITUAL 

to look for evasions, we hold to be the basis of all 
Christian piety. 

But now, with a due ingenuousness, let us look 
to the other side of this argument. Orthodoxy 
alone, is not, we say, Christianity, for it has con- 
sisted with the widest departures from its purport. 
More than a little constancy of faith and strength 
of mind are demanded in travelling over the road 
of the trinitarian controversy, from the earty years 
of the third century, onward, toward modern times ; 
and if our belief have not previously been firmly 
grounded upon the proper biblical evidence, it is 
probable that the perusal of this history will breed 
doubt, disgust, suspicion ; and will end in a hetero- 
dox conclusion. 

The Greek mind, which had relinquished none 
of the faults of a better age, and which retained 
few of its admirable qualities, and which had been 
schooled in nugatory disputation by a degenerate 
philosophy, a sophistical logic, and a spurious 
rhetoric, found its field in the trinitarian argument. 
Ponderous tomes have brought this argument down 
to our times ; but how much of the warm apostolic 
feeling do these books present to our view ? Some- 
thing indeed ; but not more in proportion to the 
mass, than there are grains of the precious metal 
to be gathered from a mud bank, in the oflSng of a 
gold coast. 



CHRISTIANITY. 99 

Orthodoxy, very early severed from evangelical 
truth, showed at once what was its quality, when 
so divorced. Some time before the breaking out 
of the trinitarian controversy, a discipline and course 
of life directly contravening the first principle of 
the Gospel had received the almost unanimous 
homage of the church, throughout the w^orld, and 
w^as applauded, on all sides, as the highest style of 
Christian piety. 

What moral influence was orthodoxy likely to 
exert, when it fell into the hands of those who had 
overlooked, or who virtually denied, the truths 
w^hich alone can bring it home to the heart ? The 
Saviour, forgotten as " the end of the law, for right- 
eousness, to every one that believeth," was soon for- 
gotten also as the " one Mediator between God and 
man." Most instructive is the fact, that, at the very 
moment w^hen trinitarian doctrine was the most 
hotly contended for, and punctiliously professed, 
mediators many, and gods many, and goddesses 
many, were receiving, under the auspices, and by 
the encouragement of the great preachers, theolo- 
gians, and bishops of the time, the fervent devotions 
of the multitude ! It w^as to these potent interces- 
sors that sincere petitions were addressed ; while 
to the Trinity was offered — a doxology ! When- 
ever men were in real trouble, and w^hen they 
needed and heartily desired help from above, they 



IQO ON SPIRITUAL 

sought it, where they beheved they should the 
soonest find it — at the shrines of the martyrs, or of 
the Virgin. No fact of church history carries a 
heavier lesson than that which w^e gather when, 
listening to the perorations of the great preachers 
of the age of orthodoxy, we hear them, first in- 
voking, with animation, and high sounding phrases, 
a saint in the heavens, while the finger pointed to 
his ghttering shrine : and then ascribing ^' honour 
and glory" to the Trinity !* 

Orthodoxy by itself, does not touch the con- 
science, does not quicken the aff'ections ; it does 
not connect itself, in any manner, with the moral 
faculties. It is not a religion, but a theory ; and 
inasmuch as it awakens no spiritual feelings, it 
consists easily with either the grossest absurdities, 
or with the grossest corruptions. 

Orthodoxy, powerless when alone, becomes even 
efficient for evil at the moment when it combines 
itself with asceticism, superstition, and hierarchical 



* The facts here adverted to — important in themselves, are 
gathering importance daily, inasmuch as an avowal — at length 
unambiguous, has been made, of the long disguised intention 
to restore the very system of which these impieties were a 
prmcipal element. Some few samples of the " catholic" 
piety of the fourth century will be furnished in a supple- 
mentary note. 



CHRISTIANITY. 101 

ambition. What is the religious history of Europe, 
through a long course of time, but a narrative of the 
horrors and the immorahties that have sprung from 
this very combination ? 

Heterodoxy, which has long been the temptation 
of the continental protestant churches, has at length 
wrought their ruin ; — or, at the best, has left them 
in an expiring condition. But in perfect equity must 
it not be acknowledged that orthodoxy, severed 
from evangelic truth, has been the temptation of 
England ; and that, at this moment, by reviving its 
ancient connexion with superstition, it gives just 
alarm to the true sons of the reformers ? Those 
great men — the lights of the sixteenth century — 
whom we do not worship, but whose steps we 
would follow, were orthodox, and yet they were no 
monks : they were Trinitarians, but they were not 
idolaters : they had studied the Fathers ; but they 
bowed to the Scriptures ; and from the Scriptures 
they recovered evangelic truth — inestimable trea- 
sure, which so many around us are now ready to 
exchange for the *^ vainly-invented" superstitions 
of antiquity ! 

Furthermore, in defining the principles assumed 
to be peculiar to Spiritual Christianity, we must not 
name some points of belief which have been differ- 
ently understood, or might we say, differently misun- 
9* 



102 ON SPIRITUAL 

derstood, among the cordial adherents of evangelic 
piety. There are articles which, though "full of 
sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly- 
persons," do not appear to all to be clear from 
extreme difficulties. 

We name then, as peculiar to Spiritual Chris- 
tianity, those truths which the human mind had 
never conceived of until the Gospel, and its pre- 
cursive types had appeared — those truths which, 
although they lie broadly on the surface of the 
apostolic writings, so many learned interpreters have 
endeavoured, by all means, and with indefatigable 
industry, to dis-pel from the Christian system, those 
truths which the pride of the heart the most highly 
resents, but in which the contrite spirit finds its 
peace. 

First in systematic order, as well as in magnitude, 
is the doctrine of the Propitiation, effected by the 
Son of God— tso held clear of admixture and eva- 
sions, as to sustain, in its bright integrity, the con- 
sequent doctrine of The full and absolute 

RESTORATION OF GUILTY MAN TO THE FAVOUR OF 

God, on his acceptance of this method of mercy ; 
— or, as it is technically phrased, " Justification 
THROUGH FAITH." A doctiinc this, which, in a 
peculiar manner, refuses to be tampered with, or 
compromised ; and which will hold its own place, 
or none. It challenges for itself, not only a broad 



CHRISTIANITY. 103 

basis, on which it may rest alone ; but a broad 
border, upon which nothing that is human 'may 
trespass. 

This doctrine when unadulterate, not only ani- 
mates orthodoxy, but shows us why it was necessary 
to lay open the mystery of the Divine nature, so 
far as it is laid open in scriptural trinitarian doctrine ; 
for we could not have learned the method of salva- 
tion, without first learning, that He who '' bore our 
sins," was indeed able to bear them, and was, in 
himself, '^ mighty to save." 

Whatever belongs to the Divine Nature must be 
incomprehensible by the human mind ; and there- 
fore — the incarnation is incomprehensible ; and 
therefore — the atonement involves a mystery incom- 
prehensible ; but not so the consequent doctrine of 
justification through faith. This doctrine turns upon 
the well understood relations of a forensic substitu- 
tion ; and as to transactions of this order, they are 
among the clearest of any with which we have to 
do, as the subjects of law and government. 

Yet simple as it is in itself, the doctrine of justifi- 
cation through the intervention of our legal sponsor, 
does, as we fully admit, rest upon a supposition so 
stupendous, that we are fain to recoil, and to ask, 
'^ can such things be true ?" 

— Is it true indeed, that the Eternal Word was 
^' made flesh ; " and that, as man, he put himself 



104 ON SPIRITUAL 

in the place of the guilty ? Look abroad upon the 
wide field of nature, and then come home, and 
calmly consider what it is you imply when you 
speak of being "justified through faith in Christ ; " 
of whom you say, that he is equal with God, and 
that he " upholdeth all things by the word of his 
power ? " 

It is, we grant it, a spectacle of wonders which 
the Scriptures open before us on this Aground ; but 
are these wonders of such a kind that we may 
readily attribute them to the inventive faculty of 
mhids like our own ? Let us however trace with 
care the steps by which we have come into the 
prospect of mysteries such as these : — ^just as a 
traveller looks anew to his footing when, having 
reached a mountain summit, through mists, which 
the morning breeze suddenly rolls away, he beholds 
with amazement kingdoms outstretched beneath 
his feet. 

In bringing the mind distinctly to contemplate the 
Scriptural doctrine of the atonement, effected by the 
death of Christ, we feel ourselves to have reached 
an elevation higher than the highest of the specula- 
tions of man. — We are compelled to confess our- 
selves in the presence of things divine and eternal. 

What then are the steps by which we reach this 
height ? — Let us retrace them ; and they are few. 
The books of the New Testament are unimpeach- 



CHRISTIANITY. 105 

able as to their genuineness and authenticity ; and 
we are compelled to acknowledsfe the grace, ma- 
jesty, and wisdom of the Saviour of whom they 
speak. He claims the right to teach us sacred 
truth ; and to teach it to mankind to the end of the 
world. The apostolic writings are warranted as 
the vehicles of the Saviour's instructions ; and 
unless we can rely upon these, in their obvious 
meaning, and after we have used all diligence to 
ascertain it, this Teacher can be no teacher to us ; 
nor this Saviour our Saviour. How should he be 
so, if we may not thus confide in the intelligible 
import of a known language ; for on the contrary 
supposition, we have no means remaining within 
our reach, of knowing certainly the terms of the 
salvation herein offered to us. We do then rely 
w4th ingenuous confidence upon the grammatical 
sense of the apostolic writings. We follow w^hith- 
ersoever these messengers of Heaven may lead us. 
Whatever they plainly aflSrm, we must either accept 
as true, or must disclaim their authority. 

But Christ's ministers teach us, if language can 
convey such a meaning, that he was indeed " God 
manifest in the flesh" — '' God over all, blessed for 
ever." 

If we draw back from such a doctrine, as in dis- 
may, let us look to the alternative. The book 
which compels us to believe that it is from God, 



106 ON SPIRITUAL 

and the only book in the world that embodies a per- 
fect morality, and the only book that contains an 
authentic hope of immortahty for man, is then, if we 
cannot admit this doctrine, so ambiguous, nay, so 
delusive in its language, that it can warrant no 
certain conclusions on any subject. Granted that 
the incarnation and the atonement are stupendous 
mysteries, which surpass our reason, and try our 
faith : but the alternative supposition— that the 
book of God may not be trusted, poisons faith, and 
breaks reason on the wheel. 

Jesus then is divine in the highest sense ; but 
why divine ? Wherefore has the " Son left the 
bosom of the Father ?" The means are infinite : is 
the end such ? For what specific purpose was it that 
he who '*is the brightness of the Father's glory," 
*' abhorred not the virgin's womb," and walked the 
earth, and conversed as man, with man ? Was it 
only to teach us virtue ? or was it only to embody 
it ? But then where is the proportion of the means 
to the end ? 

But we say, it was to suffer, " the just for the 
unjust ;" and those who hold Christian truth thus 
far, undoubtedly hold that which is of saving effica- 
cy : but we must advance yet further, if we would 
exclude the most serious errors. The doctrine of 
the atonement, dimly perceived, or at least not held 
in connexion with its forensic consequence, became 



CHRISTIANITY. 107 

little more, to the ancient church, than a spectacle 
of wonder and pathos, to be exliibited at certain 
seasons of the year ; and in its turn with the com- 
memoration of other martyrdoms ! 

The Church history of fourteen centuries affords 
convincing proof that something more than the doc- 
trine of the propitiatory work of Christ, retained in a 
creed, is necessary to give vitality to the Christian 
system. Very early the wonders of Calvary, in 
turn with the eulogies of the saints, were the themes 
of the cold, turgid rhapsodies of a false oratory. 

Almost every practice, rite and principle of the 
ancient church had the same tendency to remove, 
further and further from its place, although it was 
never denied, the scriptural doctrine of the atone- 
ment. The Apostle had said, '^ there is now no 
condemnation to them that believe ;" and that the 
sacrifice for sins, '' once offered," effected an abso- 
lute expiation. But it was not so in the sense of 
antiquity. The expiation did not expiate ; for the 
ascetics discovered that they had still the whole 
w^ork of satisfaction to do for themselves. The 
expiation did not expiate ; for the Church was con- 
stantly occupied in praying for the repose of souls, 
affirmed by itself to have received the utmost bene- 
fit w^hich could be received from a sincere faith in 
Christ. The sacrifice once offered for the sins of 
the world did not, any more than those offered 



108 ON SPIRITUAL 

under the Mosaic dispensation, " make the comers 
thereunto perfect ;" for it needed to be reiterated in 
the sacrifice of the mass . It was not true in the 
opinion of the church, that we are '^ saved from 
wrath" through Christ, for it taught even the faith- 
ful to look forward to a terrible futurity of purgato- 
rial anguish. 

INo fact connected with the history of opinions, is, 
we think, more conspicuously certain than this, that 
the ancient church, while holding trinitarian doc- 
trine, and while professing to believe in the atone- 
ment, had, in some inexplicable manner, compro- 
mised, or lost sight of, the principal element of 
Apostolic Christianity. 

Compare for a moment, the broad aspect of the 
Mosaic dispensation, and that of the ancient church 
system. The Psalms, and the other devotional 
portions of the Old Testament, make it evident that, 
although the ritual economy did not fully open the 
scheme of divine mercy toward man, it did yet 
avail to convey a calm and affectionate comfort to 
the heart of the contrite w^orshipper. As a proof 
that it did so, we may appeal, not merely to the 
pure spirituality which breathes through the Psalms, 
and the prophetic writings ; but also to the signifi- 
cant fact that it was not until sometime after the 
close of the prophetic dispensation, that the Jewish 
people went off into that fanaticism which exhibits 



CHRISTIANITY. 109 

the uneasiness of a guilty conscience, wholly igno- 
rant of the Divine mercy. 

Most remarkable is the contrast which presents 
itself in comparing, on this ground, the ancient 
Jewish, and the ancient Christian church. The 
pious members of the former did enjoy the stillness 
and the illumination of an early morning time ; and 
they looked with the comfort of hope toward the 
spreading brightness of the sunward sky. But 
after that the one sacrifice had superseded its 
types, infatuated men, with the Gospel open in their 
hands, and although they had eyes to see, saw not 
its glory ; but deprived themselves of all its bless- 
ings. The Jewish church had lived upon hope; 
the Christian church seemed to have inherited de- 
spair. The most ferocious, as well as absurd meth- 
ods of placating the wrath of Heaven, joined with 
the doctrine that sin after Baptism, that is to say, 
the vast majority of all sins, could be entitled only 
to an ambiguous forgiveness, denied peace to the 
consciences, as well of the few, as of the many. 

A forensic act, authoritatively announced, and in 
consequence of which the condemned stands exempt 
from the demands of Law, whether it rest on the 
ground of his afterwards established innocence, or 
of any satisfaction he may have been able to pro- 
pound, must be in its nature absolute. It is not an 
10 



no ON SPIRITUAL 

undefined indulgence ; it is not a weak connivance ; 
it is not a timid compromise ; it is not an evasion 
which must be held to condemn, if not the Law, its 
administrators. After such a transaction has been 
recorded in court, and proclaimed aloud, no conduct, 
on the part of him who has been so discharged, 
could be more offensive than that of an endeavour 
to go over the ground again ; as if to effect the same 
result, on conditions less humiliating to himself. 

In the justification of man through the mediation 
of Christ, man individually, as guilty, and his Divine 
Sponsor, personally competent to take upon himself 
such a part J stand forward in the Court of Heaven ; 
there to be severally dealt with as the honour of 
Law shall demand ; and if the representative of the 
guilty be indeed thus qualified, in the eye of the 
law, and if the guilty, on his part, freely accept this 
mode of satisfaction, then, when the one recedes 
from the position of danger, and the other steps into 
it. Justice having already admitted both the compe- 
tency of the substitute, and the suflSciency of the 
substitution, is itself silent. 

Such a transaction does indeed originate in 
grace or favour ; but yet if it satisfy law, it ca nbe 
open to no species of after interference. Now in 
the method of justification through faith, God him- 
self solemnly proclaims that the rectitude of his 
government is not violated ; nor the sanctity of his 



CHRISTIANITY. Ill 

law compromised. It is He who declares that, in 
this method, he '^ may be just while justifying the 
ungodly." After such a proclamation from Heaven 
has been made, '^ who is he that condemneth? It 
is God that justifieth !" 

A sacred doctrine this ! — not to be tampered 
with ; and most honoured, assuredly, when admit- 
ted with a simple-hearted and joyful gratitude ! If 
it be asked, '' Is it a truth 1" in reply, besides 
citing the apostolic authorities, which are most ex- 
plicit, we might well ask — Whence such a doctrine 
might proceed, if not from God ? Which of the 
creations of the human mind does it resemble? 
Whether we regard that aspect of it in which it is 
thoroughly intelligible ; or that in which it presents 
an inscrutable mystery, it stands equally remote 
from the customary style of human speculations ; 
beside that it contravenes the pride and prejudices 
of the heart. Clear and bright as noou is this 
Truth : vast and deep as infinity. 

Nevertheless, we suppose an objector to declare 
that he can by no means bring himself to embrace 
a doctrine involving what this involves. Let him 
however well consider on what part of the great 
scheme of man's salvation, as taught in the Scrip- 
tures, the real difficulty presses. — We believe that, 
with most objectors, it is placed too far forward. — 
Fully do we grant it to be indeed a mystery that 



112 ON SPIRITUAL 

guilty man should be delivered from the hands of 
justice by the personal intervention of his Sove- 
reign ; and yet, is there not a previous ground of 
amazement in the mere fact, admitted as it is by all 
who do not deny man's individual responsibility, 
that he — feeble as he is, and frail, should, by the 
Creator, and Sovereign of the universe, be held 
personally answerable for the acts of so brief a 
course ? Is not this the mystery ? and after we have 
mastered this, or at least have found that, amazing 
as it is, we can by no means evade it ; there will 
remain no sufficient pretext for rejecting, as incredi- 
ble, the wonders which attach to the mode of his 
deliverance. Is it true that the children of earth are 
severally the subjects of a universal government, 
and that they shall singly be called to account at 
that tribunal ? If we find that this must be granted, 
the way is open also for the mystery of mercy. 

On the other hand, when once w^e have delibe-? 
rately rejected the scheme of salvation, as if it were 
incredible, we shall find it only so much the more 
difficult to retain our hold of those notions of virtue 
apart from which man can neither respect himself, 
nor his fellows, and which are found to be the ne- 
cessary means of social order, and of personal con- 
trol. 

If these notions of a moral system (in the religious 
sense of the terms) be once abandoned, then there 



CHRISTIANITY. II? 

is no home for man — for his towering conceptions 
of happiness — for his boundless hopes — for his pure 
affections — for his domestic fehcity — for his senti- 
ments of virtue and honour ; there is no resting-place 
short of that sensual swamp, whereon, although he 
may take his level with the brute orders, he be- 
comes the infamy of the creation — the enigma of 
the universe ; while they remain as they were, the 
instances of the wisdom and benevolence of its Au- 
thor. 

But it is not possible to abandon the religious no- 
tion of a moral system ; and the more intimately we 
follow this notion out, in its consequences, the more 
deeply shall we feel that the mystery of redemption 
is anticipated by the equal wonders of that relation- 
ship between the finite and the Infinite which is 
involved when the Supreme Being condescends to 
challenge men, singly, as offenders, and as answer- 
able, individuall}'-, to Himself. 

By this very challenge, man — not as a race, but 
as an individual^ is assumed to be a morally inde- 
pendent and free agent, in a sense which hfts him 
from the dust to a level of reciprocity with God. — 
The Eternal Ruler of the Universe declares himself 
a party in a controversy in which each individual of 
the human race separately sustains the opposite po- 
sition. No liberty is granted to us to recede from 
the high, but ominous dignity of thus waging battle 
10* 



114 ON SPIRITUAL 

with the Almighty : this is a nobihty we are bom 
to ; and if in no other manner, yet by acts of wilful 
rebelUon, have we singly accepted the distinction, 
and stand pledged to the consequences. 

At this point then is the true knot of the difficulty 
which is supposed to attach to the scheme of man^s 
salvation ; and those who are staggered by its vast- 
ness, would do well to consider how far they will 
have to step back, toward the ground of the most 
abject animal philosophy, before they can reach a 
level where indeed there is no mystery to be en- 
countered, because there is no Truth to be grasped. 
And yet, even if that level loere reached — ^what per 
plexities still surround us ! On this level — the level 
of atheistic sensualism, we meet a being, endowed 
(with cursed) intellectual faculties, which enable him 
to bring under review, and to measure, and weigh,. 
a moral system, and to calculate the consequences 
of allowing himself to be reckoned a member of 
such a system ; and then, finding these consequen- 
ces undesirable— to cut himself off from it (in will 
at least) and by a deliberate suicidal act, to die— to 
the extent of half his nature ! Are we in search of 
doctrines which may be scouted as incredible, and 
which reason must indignantly resent ? Here then is 
such a doctrine — incredible, not because mysterious, 
but because monstrous. But how do we seem to 
breathe anew when, after rejecting enormities such 



. CHRISTIANITY. 115 

as these, we accept that which — mystery as it is, 
we yet assent to, as the true harmony of our moral 
faculties ! 

Is redemption a mystery ? but let us well consider 
the invisible wonders that are more than dimly in- 
dicated — by the vast range, the depth, intensity, and 
force of the feelings proper to an unschooled con- 
science. If opinions, or if ''creeds," may be fac- 
titious, affections are not so. How absurd the sup- 
position that they can be ! Take then a sensible 
and unsophisticated mind ; and, only adapting your 
style to its style — to its acquired medium of thought, 
may you not at once, and with ease, confer with it 
on the entire range of ethical questions ? will it not 
respond and consent, while you reason concerning 
''righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come" 
— while you speak of duty to man, and of duty to 
God, and while you bring the moral sense into con- 
tact with eternal truth and virtue. 

The moral system then, and the religious position 
of man as related to God is a fact^ not a theory, — 
How should you be able to awaken, in a sensitive 
unsophisticated bosom, and by the magic of a single 
word, the pungent sense of shame and demerit ; or 
the glow of virtuous sympathy, if the Creator had 
not, by his own endowments, made man, so far, a 
partaker of his own nature ? How could you ex- 
cite, within a guileless, and yet not guiltless bosom, 



116 ON SPIRITUAL 

the anguish of compunction ; how heave it with the 
swelHngs of repentance, if the waters there were 
]aot deep ? They are deep; and the agitations of 
that bosom — its ebbings and Sowings of love, fear, 
resentment, gratitude, are but waves breaking upon 
the shore of an ocean ; and the sounds they bring to 
an attentive ear, are the murmurs of the deep — evea 
the vast profound of the moral universe ! 

We boldly say then, that the incontestable facts 
of the relationship between man individually, and 
the Eternal God — a relationship at once of commu- 
nity of moral nature, and of forensic dependence, if 
duly considered, preclude every objection to which 
the scheme of redemption might seem liable, as if it 
involved more than can be granted to be possible. 
Such objections are, we say, precluded, inasmuch 
as they are anticipated by a mystery as vast ; and 
yet not to be denied. 

But we suppose the scriptural doctrine of human; 
salvation effected by the propitiatory sufferings of 
the Son of God to be assented to. By what rule 
then do we discriminate between a cold orthodoxy 
m respect to it and an evangelic faith ? Our rule 
must in this instance be an experimental, rather than 
an abstract one : — a rule not so much polemical as^ 
practical. 

It seems reasonable to affirm, that, if the apostolic 



CHRISTIANITY. 117 

doctrine of justification through faith be clearly held 
and cordially admitted, it will occupy the foremost 
place in our regards ; for it is the ground of all our 
hopes, and the relief of every fear : it is the luminous 
centre of all religious truth. It is the sun in our 
heavens : it is the source of light, and the source of 
vital warmth. We do not therefore hesitate to af- 
firm that it is scripturally held only by those who do 
assign to it this prominent position ; who recur to it 
ever and again with delight, who never feel it to be 
an exhausted theme ; w^ho build their own hopes 
upon it firmly ; who invite others to do the same 
w^ith confidence ; who neither distrust it in theory, 
nor dishonour it in practice ; who enounce it freely, 
and boldly ; and of whose piety it is the spring and 
reason. 

On the contrary, we cannot but impute a want of 
apostolic feeling, as well as a dimness of rehgious 
perception, to those, whatever articles may be ex- 
pressed in their creed, who speak reluctantly on this 
great theme, or ambiguously, or in a tone of evasion ; 
who now confess it, now deny it ; and whose wri- 
tings or discourses on the subject, baffle the endea^ 
vours of the most candid to ascertain what it is they 
really believe. 

And without a doubt, or a moment's hesitation, 
we charge those with disaffection towards this first 
principle of Apostolic Christianity, who would faiu 



118 ON SPIRIT UAL 

"reserve'' it for the hearing of a few, and would 
put it, and keep it, under their bushel. We utterly 
disallow, as spurious, the delicacy of those who pro- 
fess that they cannot desecrate so sacred a truth as 
that of the Atonement, by proclaiming it in the hear- 
ing of the thoughtless multitude ! 

The great question now at issue in the protestant 
church is not whether we shall restore or reject cer- 
tain ancient superstitions ; but whether we are to 
retain that Gospel — that bright apostolic truth, 
which those superstitions so early supplanted, and 
w^ith which it never has for a moment consisted, and 
never will consist. The question on which, at this 
hour, the rehgious destinies of England turn, is not 
wdiether we shall re-establish, or shall repudiate, 
the " Romish,^' or any other doctrine, " concerning 
purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration, as 
well of Images, as of relics, and also invocation of 
saints ; — those fond things vainly invented, and 
grounded upon no warranty of scripture ; but rather 
repugnant to the w^ord of God." — This is not the 
QUESTION ; but whether " the righteousness of God 
through faith,'* shall stand or fall among us ; and 
whether the Protestant Church itself, shall continue 
to be a witness for God, or shall be rejected as apos- 
tate. If the distinctly pronounced doctrine of justi- 
fication through faith be indeed apostolic, can the 
bold restorers of the base superstitions of the fourth 



CHRISTIANITY. 119 

century make out their title to the honours of Apos- 
tohcity ? How can we grant it them ; or how re- 
fuse to assign it to those who having clearly read 
this apostolic truth in the apostolic writings, cor- 
dially entertain it, and convincingly teach it ; and 
who honour it in their lives, and whose orders are 
authenticated by the Holy Spirit, in " giving efficacy 
to the word of his grace ?" 



n. 



The Second great truth, peculiar, as we believe, 
to Spiritual Christianity, is that of The sovereign 

AND abiding influence OF THE HoLY SPIRIT IN 
RENOVATING THE SOUL, IN EACH INSTANCE IN WHICH 
IT IS RENOVATED. 

This doctrine also, like the preceding, while in 
One view it is an inscrutable mystery, is in another 
an intelligible truth, which accords at once with our 
consciousness, and with the principles of sound phi- 
losophy. The contact of the Infinite Mind with the 
finite, is indeed a depth ; but not so the restoration 
of the moral faculties, as a matter of consciousness. 
The gradual predominance of better impulses, where 
the worse have had sway, is no abyss wherein faith 
is staggered ; nor is even the fact, when it occurs, 
difficult to be admitted, of a sudden breaking down 



120 ON SPIRITUAL 

of the obduracy of the will, and the yielding of pride, 
and the subsiding of the tempest of passion, and the 
dying away of earthly desires. Whether the com- 
mencement of such a change be conspicuously mark- 
ed, or not, is a point not important. What is there, 
we ask, either in the fact of such a change, or in its 
being attributed to the divine agency, which reason 
ought to resent ? It may be offensive to pride ; but 
we boldly say it is not so to reason ; and it can be- 
come so only in consequence of mystifications which 
may have been thereto attached. 

It may be well here to state the distinction be- 
tween mystery, and mystification ; or between the 
inscrutable and the perplexed. Those things may 
properly be called mysterious which, either in their 
own nature, or from the peculiarity of their position 
toward us, transcend the powers of the human mind 
to grasp them : they are things which may be known 
of, although not known. The divine omnipotence 
is a mystery, and the omnipresence ; and so is the 
indisputable truth, that the Eternal Being is related 
to the successive points of duration — the past, the 
present, and the future, in one and the same man- 
ner, whatever that may be ; or, to use a mathema- 
tical analogy, that His relation to time is measura- 
ble, at all points, by the same radius. 

But mystification is factitious mystery ; or, it is 
the heaping of obscurity upon things which, in their 



CHRISTIANITY. 121 

nature, come within the range of the senses, or of 
the consciousness, or of the reasoning faculty. To 
affirm that a substance famihar to four of the senses 
has suddenly ceased to be what our perceptions 
declare it yet to remain, is mystification, not mys- 
tery ; nor is such a dogma to be admitted without 
inflicting an injury upon the intellectual and moral 
faculties, fatal, in an equal degree, to the vitality of 
faith, and to the integrity of reason. 

Those early, and alas ! not extinct superstitions 
which stood connected with the doctrine of the ope- 
rations of the Holy Spirit were all of this class. 
How was a most sacred truth transmuted into a 
frivolous mystification, when men were taught to 
look for the renovating influences of the Holy Spi- 
rit — not into their own bosoms, but to the fingers 
of the priest ! 

But a true philosophy will not, we think, con- 
demn as irrational the following affirmations — That 
a great — an entire change in the condition and habits 
of the moral faculties — or what may well be called 
a renovation of them, is indispensable to our re- 
covery of true virtue and felicity. 

— That men, unassisted from above, do not — and 
we may add, cannot, effect any such renovation of 
their moral nature. 

— That this happy change, wherever it takes 
11 



122 ON SPIRITUAL' 

place, must therefore be regarded as the immediate 
effect of a divine influence upon the mind. 

-—That this change coincides withy and is undis- 
tinguishable from, the natural and ordinary opera- 
tions of the mind : — that is to say, it is a moral 
restoration ; neither preternatural in the sense of 
the enthusiast ; nor semi-miraculous in the sense 
of those who uphold sacramental and ritual mystifi- 
cations. 

Let it only be granted that true felicity must con- 
sist in the predominance of holy affections, or of 
emotions- habitually tending toward God ; and let it 
also be granted that no such affections ordinarily 
belong to us, nor spontaneously spring up or grow 
with our growth ; then must we not acknowledge 
that the doctrine so clearly affirmed in Scripture of 
the sovereign renovating influences of the Holy Spi- 
rit is full of consolation to ourselves,, as well as 
strictly accordant with the best conceptions we can 
form of the goodness of God ? 

What then is conversion, but an act of sovereign 
benevolence, the highest in its intention, and the 
most to be desired ; and which, if we deal faith- 
fully with ourselves, we must confess to be needed 
not less absolutely (if we are to be happy) than is 
that creative power to which we owe, every moment^ 
existence itself? 

Now we are fairly entitled to claim this sacred 



CHEISTIANITY. 123 

truth— the doctrine of the sovereign, renovating in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and the 
direct source and cause of whatever is holy, as pe- 
culiar to Spiritual Christianity^ inasmuch as, like 
the doctrine of justification through faith, it has 
(even when admitted in words) been constantly 
evaded, or supplanted, on the one side by rational- 
ists, and on the other by the promoters of supersti- 
tion, ancient and modern. 

Great truths are always lost or retained together ; 
and the two we have named have both been re- 
moved from the view of the mass of professed 
Christians, through a long course of time, by the 
substitution of symbols, for the things signified ; 
and by the practice of so magnifying the rites which 
typify spiritual realities, as to throw these into the 
shade. 

It was vain to suppose that the mass of men 
would continue to think of justification, and sancti- 
fication, and of fitness for Heaven, as moral and 
spiritual realities, when they were assured, in the 
most solemn manner, that justification, sanctifica- 
tion, and preparation for heaven, all passed upon 
them, unconsciously, at the moment when they 
emerged from the baptismal pool ! 

But at this point we are warned " not to trifle 
with things sacred." God forbid that we should 
do so, while intending to plead for the most serious 



124 ON SPIRITUAL 

truths ! But in this instance we repel the imputa- 
tion with confidence, and affirm that it is not we 
who trifle with things sacred. — What things then 
are sacred ? The rites of rehgion are so, when they 
hold their place ; but they become mischievous im- 
pieties, when thrust from it. To rites we assign 
the utmost measure of importance which, so far as 
we can gather, the Apostles teach us to assign to 
them ; and we dare attach no more ; and especially 
because all religious history exhibits the infatuated 
determination of the human mind to evade realities, 
if it be possible, by the aid of ceremonies. 

But we say it is not the adherents of evangelic 
doctrine who trifle with things sacred. Surely the 
immortal welfare of man is sacred ; and yet how is 
this sported with by those who lull the conscience 
with a promise of salvation that may be managed 
by proxy ! Must not one tremble to witness the 
temerity of those who, with little or no inquiry into 
the condition of the soul, yet venture to grant pass- 
ports into eternity ? 

But it is not we who trifle with things sacred, or 
even with the symbols of such things ; and we ap- 
peal to the fact that, wherever Spiritual Christianity 
most flourishes, there the genuine ordinances of 
Clirist are the most reverently and affectionately 
regarded. 

Yet again — we hold nothing on earth to be more 



CHRISTIANlTt. 125 

sacred, than is the work of the Holy Spirit, when 
clearly manifested in the temper and unblamable 
conduct of Christian men. If there be any instances 
in which the reality of religion comes home to our 
convictions with irresistible force, it is when we 
converse with those who themselves hold much com- 
munion with God. As the Agent is most sacred, 
so is his work ; nor can there be, as we think, an 
impiety more bold than that of those who, after dis- 
tinctly contemplating the work of the Spirit of God, 
indubitably displayed in the walk and heavenly dis- 
positions of Christian men, dare to scout it as alto 
gether factitious, because, forsooth, the Christianity 
of these seeming Christians is open to the suspicion 
cf having reached them through some indirect chan- 
nel ! Thus to walk forth amid the most precious 
of the works of God, trampling without remorse 
upon whatever does not happen to lie v/ithin a cer- 
tain ecclesiastical border, must be held to indicate 
— is it the highest moral courage^ — or not rather, a 
temper most irrehgious, as well as arrogant. 

This is indeed to trifle with things sacred ; and 
the more so when it is remembered that the preva- 
lence of so intolerant a theory, and the bold avowal 
of it by those who are regarded as the best in- 
formed expounders of Christianity, silently but ex- 
tensively operates to drive cultured and ingenious 
minds into deism or atheism. What is this Chris^ 
11* 



126 ON SPIRITUAL 

tianity, say such, which, while professing to be a 
rehgion, not of bondage and forms, but of truth 
and love, nevertheless impels its adherents to vio- 
late all charity on the precarious ground of an ela* 
borate hypothesis ! 

It is unavoidable thus pointedly to advert to 
these now prevalent errors, because in the practical 
interpretation given them, they are absolutely in- 
compatible with an adherence to Spiritual Chris- 
tianity. Those who are sternly enjoined, on peril 
of their own salvation, not to recognize as Christian 
brethren any whose ecclesiastical legitimacy may 
be ambiguous, are, of necessity, driven to adopt 
such a notion of Christian piety as may consist 
with the application of this ecclesiastical rule. In 
plain words, they must learn to scout as futile or 
illusory, whatever is moral and spiritual in religion ; 
while they fix their attention exclusively upon that 
w^hich is formal and adjunctive. Nor will those 
who are taught to judge of others in this manner, 
be slow to judge of themselves, on the same prin- 
ciple. ''If we be Christians ecclesiastically ^ it is 
enough : all besides is illusion." 

And such in fact are every day seen to be the 
products of the ecclesiastical theory which we de- 
nounce as, at this time, the antagonist of Spiritual 
Christianity. In its recent revival it has shed a 
cold arrogance into many bosoms that once glowed 



CHRISTIANITY. 127 

with Christian affection ; and, at the same time, it 
has drawn such aside (in how many sad instances !) 
from an enhghtened regard to the substantial truths 
of the Gospel ; while they give all their cares to 
frivolous and servile observances. 

But we turn to a happier theme. Happy indeed, 
and ennobling, as well as efficacious, is the belief, 
that He ** from whom all holy desires, good coun- 
sels, and just works do proceed," dwelleth in us, as 
the Author of spiritual life ! In a word, that the 
body of the Christian is '' the temple of the Holy 
Ghost." A doctrine this, which, if scripturally 
held, precludes at once despondency and presump- 
tion. For how should we despond, if He who 
** creates us anew in Christ Jesus," is almighty ? 
or how presume, if we be convinced that, were the 
sacred energy withdrawn, there " would remain in 
us no good thing ?" 



HI. 



We reach then our ultimate position, and the 
THIRD truth, peculiar, as we assume, to Spiritual 
Christianity, which is this — that a cordial re- 
ception OF THE TWO ALREADY NAMED, JUSTIFICA- 
TION THROUGH FAITH, AND THE S0VBREI6N INDWEL- 
LING INFLUENCES OF THE HoLY SPIRIT, BRING* 



l28 ON SPIRITUAL 

WITH IT A SETTLED AND AFFECTIONATE SENSE Of 
SECURITY, OR PEACE AND JOY IN BELIEVING, WHICH 
BECOMES THE SPRING OF HOLY TEMPERS, AND VIR- 
TUOUS CONDUCT. 

Man, created for happiness, is truly virtuous only 
so far as he is happy. Virtue may indeed be in a 
suifering condition ; but never is it actually severed 
from happiness ; for it is never cut off from com* 
munion with Him who is the fountain of joy. 

The Apostle, not speaking as in the person of 
one who had been admitted into the third heavens, 
and had witnessed the delights of paradise ; but 
when addressing Christians, as such, appeals to 
their consciousness, and affirms it as a common 
truth, that, " being justified by faith, they have 
peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ ; 
and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." " The 
love of God," he says, '' is shed abroad in our 
hearts, by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." 
He enjoins Christians, as their characteristic duty, 
to " rejoice always ;" and he repeats the injunc- 
tion, as if to remind them that he had not forgot- 
ten the many sources of uneasiness which might 
disturb their happiness, and which yet, in his view, 
should not destroy it. 

Tf the Gospel be '^glad tidings," can it be 
strange that it should make those glad who heartily 
receive it ? or would it not be strange if it did not ? 



CHRISTIANITY. 129 

Are we anxious that our Christianity should be 
apostoHc ? let us then hear '' the chief of the 
Apostles," who aflGLrms that although the object of 
faith be unseen, yet the Christian, loving his Sa- 
viour, and beheving in him, ''rejoices with joy un- 
speakable, and full of glory." If to ourselves any 
such state of mind, or such affections, or any such 
happiness, be not known, or easily conceived of, our 
faith itself should be examined anew. 

"Perfect love," says ''the beloved disciple;" 
that is to say, genuine love, " casteth out fear ;" 
and with it " torment." 

Through the knowledge of the Gospel, and the 
hearty reception of its promises, we are " made 
partakers of the Divine nature." But God is 
" blessed for evermore." Shall we then be drawing 
near to this nature continually, without a happy 
consciousness of the felicity we are approaching ? 
Shall we come up to the fountain of Ught, and re- 
ceive thence no illumination ? Those do not ap- 
pear to know much of humEin nature who are jeal- 
ous of happiness, as an energy of virtue ; or who 
suppose that virtue on earth will not show whence 
she has descended, and whither she is going. 

Bring this principle to a familiar test. The king- 
dom of heaven, we are expressly told, is a pater- 
nal system of love and duty ; it is not a despotism. 
Now, if we be personally familiar with the mate- 



130 ON SPIRITUAL 

rials whence our illustration may draw its analogy, 
let us look within the circle of a family, and there 
make trial of the opposite methods of eliciting the 
greatest amount of effective service^ and of dutiful 
performances ; that is to say of filial virtue. First, 
let us work the principle of bondage and fear. Let 
dread be the prime impulse of every domestic 
movement, and love a rare and precarious blessing. 
Let the paternal tenderness, if felt at all, yet be 
disguised by frowns, and let it express itself, in all 
instances, so ambiguously that the child may rea- 
sonably question its very existence ; and let each 
son and daughter, from the youngest to the eldest, 
constantly have in view, as a chilling caution, the 
possible, and net very improbable event, of a final 
expulsion from the paternal home, and a cutting off 
from all share in the inheritance. Make trial of 
this method, until you have converted a home into 
a prison, and children into abject and resentful 
slaves ! 

But assume the opposite principle. Do not ex- 
clude fear, yet govern by love. Do not exclude 
suffering ; but never, so far as your power may 
avail, never let suffering exclude happiness. Let 
all be as happy at home as the conditions of the 
present state may admit ; and especially let all feel 
that happiness is secured to the utmost extent to 
wbiph parental vigilance may reach. Whatever 



CHRlsriANITT. 131 

variety of disposition a family so treated may ex*- 
hibit, can there be a doubt that it will immeasura* 
bly surpass the wretched family, in filial obedience, 
as well as in attachment ? 

— If we then, being evil, yet know how to rule 
our households by the means of love and joy, how 
shall not our heavenly Father much rather know 
how to do the same ? 

But where then, it may be asked, is our security 
against presumption, or a licentious abuse of Chris-» 
tian privileges ? The same apostohc word that 
enjoins us to rejoice, conveys the necessary precau- 
tion ; and to take up the precaution, forgetting the 
privilege which it balances, is surely as great an 
error as to use the privilege, and to forget the pre- 
caution. A true belief of the Gospel brings with 
it a belief also of the fact which the Gospel attests. 
The Christian who indeed believes himself to be 
saved, will recollect from what, and at what cost, 
and to what end. 

In all cases in which the human mind comes habi- 
tually under the control of a single motive, or of 
motives of one cast and tendency, the consequence 
is some species of extratagance, bordering often 
upon insanity. If we are to be powerfully, and at 
the same time healthfully affected, it must be by 
motives which act upon us in the way of counter- 
poise, or of mutual correction ; and the product of 



132 N SP IRI TU AL 

which is a joint product of forces moving in differ* 
ent, if not opposite directions. 

The motives of spiritual — evangehc Christianity, 
are of this composite kind. They are deep contra- 
rieties, thoroughly harmonized. The motives and 
reasons of an assured peace and joy, spring directly 
from considerations the most profoundly afflictive, 
or humiliating. It is in this manner that moral 
force is generated ; and yet a force v^hich is of 
healthful and happy tendency* 

Is it true that the Eternal Word— was " made 
fl^sh, and dwelt among us," and "died for our sins," 
having been constituted " a curse for us ? " Sin 
then is ruin — immortal ruin ; and our condition, if 
not benefitted by that sacrifice, is desperate. But 
the Saviour, as we learn from his own lips, although 
given by the Father, to suffer for the sins of the 
" whole world," yet gave himself for his people, 
individually. The propitiation, which was sufficient 
for " taking away the sin of world," has no excess 
of sufficiency in relation to the sin of each believer. 
On this ground the apostle speaks of his Lord as 
" having loved him, and given himself for Am." 

A distinct apprehension, therefore, of truths such 
as these, brings home to the heart every kind of 
powerful influence — every imaginable element of 
awe, compunction, dread, gratitude, and tender 
affection, to which the human mind may be open- 



CHRISTIANITY. 133 

And just in proportion as sentiments of the one 
kind become intense, those of the opposite quahty 
are enhanced. 

Why then may not the Christian who has learned 
to renounce all confidence in himself, as well as in 
beings like himself, and to trust alone in Him who 
is " mighty to save " — ^why may he not freely 
rejoice, nay, exult with joy unutterable, in the pros-^ 
pect of a blissful immortality near at hand ; — seeing 
that the very condition of this joy is an always pro- 
portionate depth of those convictions which render 
him serious in temper, sedulous in duty, and keenly 
apprehensive of the divine displeasure ? 

It is on this very ground that we reject, as equally 
unchristian and unphilosophical, those sombre in- 
terpretations of Christianity which aim to secure 
seriousness of temper, assiduity in good works, and 
a necessary dread of the Divine Majesty, not by a 
balance of counteracting motives ; but by giving an 
almost unlimited operation to motives of one order, 
and these of the kind which, when uncorrected, 
crush and villify the moral sentiments. 

But do facts bear us out in advancing these broad 
aflGbrmations ? Let us select our genuine instances, 
and we say they do. Wherever evangelic doctrines 
are indeed entertained with an unfeigned belief of 
their reality, there the product is not a lax, presump- 
12 



134 ON SPIRITUAL 

tuous religionism ; but a humble, and yet happy 
piety, and a consistent virtue. 

But need we say that a loose and heartless evan- 
gelic faith may, in a moral point of view, be of far 
less value than is a cordially professed superstition ? 
The vast intrinsic difference between genuine Chris- 
tianity, and the austere illusions which are now 
supplanting it, is much obscured by this circum- 
stance. The grave puritanism (may we so apply 
the term ?) which fascinates so many ardent minds, 
is, although it dates itself from a remote age, in this 
age quite new, and it possesses all that freshness 
and animation which is characteristic of a recent 
religious impulse ; or, as we might take the liberty 
to call it, of a *^ revival." 

Meantime the evangelic principle had, at the 
moment of the birth of its antagonist, spent itself ; 
or had become in a degree languid. Its interior 
force had been dissipated by many and distracting 
occupations-^commendable in themselves, but not 
easily made to consist with profound sentiments, of 
any kind. At the same time an almost unprece- 
dented outburst of political and ecclesiastical strife 
(must we not say of hatred ?) had produced its 
inevitable — its oion effects, in vitiating the religious 
sentiments of thousands, in all communions. 

At such a moment, an austere pietism, exempted 
from every admixture of vulgarity, by issuing from 



CHRISTIANITY, 135 

halls of learning, and graced with the undefined 
(and alas ! unexamined) recommendations of antir 
quity, and offering to young and ambitious spirits a 
course of glory— if not heavenly, yet not earthly in 
the ordinary sense— -such a system, thus graced, 
comes into comparison with what was already 
exhausted-— divided— Klistracted — with what had 
ceased for some long time, to be under the guidance 
of powerful and deeply moved minds. 

The consequence was such as might have been 
supposed, and such as has invariably resulted from 
similar opposition of a spent energy, with an energy 
renovated. If at this moment there be reason to 
anticipate a better issue of this collision than the 
usual course of human affairs would warrant us in 
expecting, such a hope must be drawn, chiefly, from 
the now obvious fact, that the restorers of ** Catho- 
lic " superstitions are, like many other leaders of 
sects, gifted with more zeal than discretion. 

But it will be demanded— what we mean by 
speaking of the evangelic principle as having been 
lately, or as still being, in a state of some exhaustion 
or collapse. 

Certainly not, that evangelical doctrine has ceased 
to be professed with explicitness, or taught scrip- 
turally. Certainly not, that it has so fallen into 
decay as to fail of producing its proper and happy 
effects in very many instances, and on all sides. 



136 ON SPIRITUAL 

Certainly not, that any dogmatic apostasy from the 
faith has taken place among us. 

On the contrary, it should be acknowledged with 
gratitude, that those frightful delusions which were 
the fruit of an absurd system of metaphysics, more 
absurdly appHed to the simplicity of scripture, and 
which at one time extensively disgraced evangelic 
communions, have nearly disappeared ; and that, 
partly as scattered by argument, partly as extin- 
guished by their own fumes, these false fires are 
almost gone out. 

What then do we complain of? not of False 
Doctrine ; — but rather of faintness at the heart ; as 
a man may be labouring under no assignable malady, 
whose pulse yet is feeble, whose appetite is way- 
ward, whose waking hours are listless, and whose 
repose is unquiet. 

If it be our part to speak of Spiritual Christianity, 
we are bound to take its characteristics as we find 
them in the apostolic writings ; — not as they may 
happen to be presented to the eye in the momentary 
aspects of this or that favoured religious body. 
What does impartiality mean, if while loudly de- 
nouncing superstition, or any other antichristian 
error ; we allow it, by our discreet silence and deli- 
cate reserve, to be gathered, that the body from the 
bosom of which we are supposed to come is, in our 
esteem, no sharer in those ever changing alternations 



CHRISTIANITY. 137 

of health and sickness which attach to whatever is 
human ! 

Good reason is there to hope that, after the now 
spreading ^' Cathohc " puritanism shall have freely 
exhibited its inner qualities, and shall have honestly 
avowed its ulterior purposes, the deep movement 
of which it has been the immediate cause, may, 
through the divine goodness, take a happier course, 
and extensively promote genuine piety. 

"It is not in man that walketh to direct his 
steps ;" — and certainly there does not belong to the 
religious commonwealth any such individual direc^ 
tive wisdom as might avail for the conduct of the 
whole, in its dubious progress tow^ard truth and 
virtue. This overruling power it is not in man to 
exercise. Our part is, while humbly we implore 
this divine governance of the church, meekly to 
yield ourselves to it, when personally challenged to 
surrender our prejudices or to forego our preferences, 
or to make any other sacrifice, which may give 
evidence of our ^* love of the Truth." 



12^ 



THE 



THIRD LECTURE 



ON THE ETHICAL CHARACTERISTICS 
SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY 



OF 



THE THIRD LECTURE. 



We are now to speak of the ethical characteris- 
tics of Spiritual Christianity ; or of the influence 
which the great truths affirmed to constitute evan- 
geUc doctrine should, and do exert over the dispo- 
sitions and conduct of those who cordially embrace 
them. 

But whence are we to derive our knowledge of 
what this influence actually is ? Is it to be drawn 
inductively, from observation of facts around us ; 
or hypothetically, from a consideration of what 
ought to be the moral efficiency of such truths ? 

We reply that we should adopt either method 
without fear as to the result. Nevertheless the first, 
namely, that of an appeal to the actual and visible 
influence of the great principles of the Gospel, 
wherever they have been allowed fully to take 
effect, could not be rendered satisfactory, or be ex- 
empted from plausible objections, within any such 
limits as are prescribed to us in the present instance 



142 ON SPIRITUAL 

Scarcely any subject, connected with religion, 
can be named, of wider compass than would be a 
thoroughly impartial and comprehensive inquiry as 
to the actual efficiency of evangelic principles, as 
they have been maintained in this, and other coun- 
tries. If we do not go into such an inquiry, it is 
not from hesitation as to the issue ; nor merely from 
a regard to our limits ; but still more from a deci- 
sive unwillingness to affirm, without the adduction 
of ample proof, even those things of which we 
have the most entire persuasion, and the truth of 
which long observation has confirmed. 

In taking however the other method — namely, 
that of inferring the proper moral operation of cer- 
tain religious truths from their manifest tendency, 
we do not intend in any instance, to draw inferen- 
ces not sustained, as we fully believe, by sufficient 
evidence ; much less to assume in theory what is 
contradicted in fact. 

This method moreover, is warranted by the be- 
lief which, as we think, the entire course of human 
affairs, within the circle of church history, suggests, 
or which it impels us to adopt, that the religion of 
Christ, destined as it is to bless the human family 
through a far extended period, ought to be consid- 
ered as now, in our times, preparing itself for a 
development of its powers, proportioned, at once, 
to the wide extent, and to the long continuance of 



CHRISTIANITY. 143 

its ultimate triumph. The cycles of the Gospel 
have been slow in their revolutions, because the en- 
tire period of its history on earth is of incalculable 
extent. 

How then do such views bear upon our present 
subject? — Just as the breaking of the morning 
affects the movements of those who, in painful 
anxiety, have watched through the night. While 
thus therefore considering what is, and should he, 
the moral influence of the Gospel, we are, in this 
sense, " forgetting the things that are behind, and 
reaching forward to those that are before." We 
are not thinking of the struggles of that which is 
expiring ; but of that which is even now coming to 
the birth. 

We are then to confine our view of Christianity 
to that aspect of it in which it presents itself as a 
power, adapted to the reformation of the human 
family ; or its restoration, universally, to a condition 
of purity, brotherly affection, and rectitude ; and to 
so much happiness as the prevalence of truth and 
love must ensure. 

That the religion of Christ was framed with the 
intention of bringing about such a restitution of 
the social system, and that it is actually advancing 
toward the accomplishment of that end, will, as we 
think, convincingly appear if we look to two or 



144 ON SPIRITUAL 

three special instances, in which what it has actu- 
ally effected affords ground of hope for its further 
triumphs. 

It is certain that while the New Testament eon-^ 
tains, scattered over its surface, the definite articles 
of a perfect system of ethics, delivered in the form 
of precise precepts and prohibitions ; it contains 
moreover, and which are the secret of its power, 
vital principles, not always defined ; but which, as 
they are evolved, one after another, and are succes- 
sively brought to bear upon the opinions and man- 
ners of Christianized nations, do actually remove 
from them those flagrant evils which had accumu- 
lated in the course of time, and which, so long as 
they are prevalent, abate very much the religious 
sensibilities even of those who are the most consci- 
entious. 

Let it then be well observed that, while the con* 
science of the individual Christian — studious of his 
Bible, is informed and directed, and his conduct is 
bound by explicit precepts, touching at all points 
the entire surface of his moral existence ; these 
precepts are propounded always as exemplifica- 
tions of principles, supposed to reside in his bosom, 
as a Christian^ and apart from which the mere pre- 
cept, even if rigorously respected, would leave him 
liable to the imputation of not fulfilling " the law 
of Christ." It must be so; because Christianity 



CHRISTIANITY. 145 

is a spiritual religion ; — a new life of the soul, ma- 
nifesting itself, as occasion arises, in the outward 
behaviour. 

But this is not all ; and it is at the present mo- 
ment especially important to keep the fiurther truth 
in mind, that the New Testament, considered as 
embodying a system of morals for the world — a 
system which is slowly to develop itself, until the 
human family has been led by it into the path of 
peace and purity, effects this great purpose, not by 
prohibiting, in so many w^ords, the evils it is at 
length to abolish ; but by putting in movement un- 
obtrusive impulses, which nothing, in the end, shall 
be able to withstand. 

It is in this manner that the Gospel has already 
conquered for itself an ample territory of just and 
humane sentiments, on the field of the social sys- 
tem ; and it is thus that it is now, with an observ- 
able acceleration, going forth— sconquering and to 
conquer. These conquests proceed even at times 
when Cliristian piety may not be in the most heal- 
thy state. We take an instance or two ; and those 
which we shall name will show that no hopes of re- 
formation for the world, if clearly founded upon 
what we may be sure is the ultimate moral inten- 
tion of the Scriptures, ought to be regarded as chi- 
merical ; and that, with a steady faith, we may look 
forward to what would deserve to be called a gold- 
13 



146 ONSPIRITUAL 

en age, so far as the universal prevalence of 
Christian principles must bring about so happy a 
condition of the human family. 

To the Gospel, thus v^orking reformation by the 
noiseless operation of its ethical principles, blessing 
us often unawares, and even against the bent of 
our perverse wills — to the gospel. Woman owes 
every thing good ; for she derives from it her power 
to bless indeed those whom she loves ; and thus to 
become herself happy. Acknowledged as " one 
in Christ," with man, and a sharer in the perils and 
dignities of personal responsibility to God, and a 
partner, without a shade of difference, in the hope 
of immortality, she takes a place never before 
granted to her. This religious equality is enough 
to ensure her welfare in every other sense ; and the 
formal precepts which guard the sanctities of do- 
mestic life stand forth indeed as law ; but are, in a 
manner, superseded by deeper forces, which work 
from within. The precept is the verbal expression 
of something more efficient, and of wider applica- 
tion than itself. Polygamy — the curse of man, not 
only disappears, (and whether it be distinctly pro- 
hibited or not) but a broad foundation is laid for the 
choicest happiness which earth admits, that of the 
untainted domestic affections. If then a question 
could be seriously agitated as to the lawfuhiess of 
polygamy, under the Christian system, it would 



CHRISTIANITY. 147 

properly be determined, not by searching for enact- 
ments, or statutes ; but by considering whether the 
hopes and dignities of Christian piety be woman's 
right ; for if they be, then is she no longer man's 
slave ; but his friend and companion on the road to 
heaven ; and as such, her pure affections are not to 
be outraged, or herself degraded. This instance 
exemplifies that occult, but efficacious process by 
which the religion of Christ brings about the reform 
of manners, more certainly than could be done by 
prohibitions. 

It was as opposed to the first principles of the 
Gospel — the gospel of mercy, that the sanguinary 
passion for the shameless murders of the public 
games gave way. The Apostles, in their circuits 
through the Roman world, had everywhere wit- 
nessed these horrors ; and yet they did not, as an- 
gry reformers would undoubtedly have done, openly 
inveigh against them ; nor did they eocplicitly for- 
bid Christians to take part in them. But they 
taught humanity on principles so deep and wide, as 
to ensure, at length, the removal of these atrocities, 
wherever the Gospel should come to be respected 
by the government of any country. 

Or we may take the very significant instance of 
slavery — that horrid usage — backed by a worse 
doctrine — slavery, which at this moment is cursing 
the world, less even by the miseries it immediately 



148 ON SPIRITUAL 

entails, than by causing, as it does, a blockage on 
that high road whereon mercy and truth for all na- 
tions are ready to make their triumphant progress. 

The present patrons of this enormity please them- 
selves in affirming, what is indeed true, that neither 
Christ nor his Apostles explicitly forbid it. They 
do not ; — but they have done more than forbid it ; 
for they have challenged the slave as man, and have 
taught him that his soul can neither be bought nor 
sold. Only leave this doctrine to take its effect, 
and it will, in its season, emancipate his body, 
Christ, moreover, has taught men to cherish and 
to respect each other as brethren. But wall slavery 
consist with the universal acceptance of any such 
royal law of love ? It will not. Christianity and 
slavery, when the former comes to rule the world, 
will not endure each other : the one must expel and 
destroy the other ; for they work, not merely from 
different, but from antagonist principles : — the one 
is fatal to the other ; and that one which cannot die, 
must ere long slay its rival. 

This signal instance is the more pertinent to our 
immediate argument, inasmuch as it is now, on a 
large scale, and under circumstances of unusual 
excitement, displaying this very characteristic of 
Christian ethics, to effect an ulterior beneficent in- 
tention by the efficacy of its principles, more than 
by the force of its precepts. Moreover, it is to be 



CHRISTIANITY. 149 

observed, that while the evil against w^hich the Gos- 
pel is thus directing its silent irresistible energy, is 
of the highest enormity, the absence of express pro- 
hibitions on the subject, and the apparent sanction 
of an implicit approval, give the bolder relief to the 
doctrine we are illustrating. For in this instance 
it is seen, that, notwithstanding the ambiguity or 
silence of the Christian code, touching slavery, and 
notwithstanding the fact of its having given its in- 
fluence more explicitly to strengthen the principle 
of patient endurance in the slave, than to inculcate 
upon the master the duty of releasing his bondman ; 
— that yet the deep-working principle of Christian- 
ity — its force of love, as it slowly develops itself, 
and becomes better understood, and takes a firmer 
hold of all minds, and raises the standard of humane 
feehng, must render slavery every year less and 
less tolerable, within Christianized communities — 
must at length expel it from the bosom of civiUza- 
tion — must drive it further and further outward into 
the wilds of society, and leave it, seen and con- 
fessed as such, a sheer curse, resting upon the heads 
and homes of its infatuated supporters ; and at length 
bring it to be denounced, by all but savages, as a 
nuisance in the world — a nuisance insufferable, to 
be swept away at whatever risk. 

A parallel instance of the gradual efficacy of the 
Christian ethics in removing inveterate evils by the 
13* 



150 ON SPIRITUAL 

slow expansion of principles, rather than by express 
prohibitions, is that of War. The amiable friends 
of universal peace seem, although diametrically op- 
posed in every thing to the upholders of slavery, yet 
to have fallen into a similar misapprehension of the 
spirit of the Christian code. For while the apolo- 
gists of slavery are looking into the New Testament 
for what may serve to palliate their horrid doctrine, 
in the way of apparent connivance, the friends of 
Peace are searching for that which, we presume, 
they will not find — direct prohibitions of war ; al- 
though they may easily find that which must, in its 
season, and perhaps at no very remote period, re- 
lieve the world of this scourge, and for ever. Let 
but a Christian feeling pervade, even if it were only 
three powerful communities of the civilized world 
— and there would be no more war, in any corner 
of it. 

Now in any instance in which the patrons of 
prescriptive evils run to the Scriptures to find either 
precedent for them, or the absence of formal pro- 
hibitions, they might be told, not merely that, in 
taking such a part, they show themselves to be 
destitute of ** the mind that was in Christ ;" but 
that they totally misunderstand the very structure 
of the Christian system, as an ethical code, and 
which we are bound to regard always in its power 
and purport, rather than in its prohibitions ; and 



CHRISTIANITY. 151 

especially when we have to do with immoral usages 
peculiar to countries, or to times. The reprovers 
of such usages should therefore be peculiarly care- 
ful not to stake a good cause upon the interpreta- 
tion of single texts ; but should rather bend their 
utmost endeavours to the work of promulgating, in 
the purest form, those first truths before which 
nothing that is malign, unjust, or impure, will be 
able to stand. It is a circumstance deserving to be 
noticed, that those who have the most signalized 
their zeal in opposition to special evils, have not 
often been remarkable for their cordial regard to the 
great truths of the Gospel. 

This practical error, so often fallen into by Chris- 
tian philanthropists, unfortunately gives counte- 
nance, indirectly, to the course pursued by men of 
an opposite temper, who, in quoting Scripture (as 
Satan quotes it) in defence of impiety and wrong, 
plant the Gospel, in the Gospel's own path ; and 
doubly obstruct its triumphant progress, first, by 
upholding what is wicked ; and then by loading 
Christianity with the disgrace of seeming to sup- 
port it. 

Let the Gospel, in its genuine energy, pervade a 
community, and each ancient abuse that attaches 
to it, will come, in its turn, to be questioned and 
rebuked, and will at length yield to this sovereign 
influence. We confide too little in the heavenly 



152 ON SPIRITUAL 

efficacy of Christian principles, when we labour to 
effect reformations on the lower ground of utility, 
or of a temporizing expediency. 

And yet even when argued on these lower grounds, 
the purity of the Christian ethics seldom fails to win 
a triumph. Some old injustice — some immemorial 
wrong, which has worked as a canker within the 
social system, is at length brought under notice. 
This interference of " busy zeal" is at first hotly 
resented. The originators of the protest look again 
to the grounds of their objection, and strengthen 
their argument. The reasons they advance compel 
attention, and are examined, and then the entire 
code of -Christian ethics, as applicable to the evil in 
question, is brought to bear upon it. The result, 
whether it be more or less definite, and even if the 
first protest be overruled, is to raise the tone of 
moral feeling, throughout the community, and to 
bring the rule of morals into closer contact with 
the consciences of all who are sincere in their 
Christian profession. The Gospel of Christ has 
thus won another triumph, in preparation for that 
which shall be universal ; and to the eye of an in- 
telligent observer these successive evolutions of 
Christian morality, are clearly predictive of such a 
triumph. 

If Christianity be yet upheld in its purity ; and if 
it be permitted to work its way forward, a time must 



CHRISTIANITY. 153 

come, when the acceleration of its progress shall 
attract all eyes, and shall begin to date its periodic 
advances, not by centuries, but by years ; or even 
by months and days. The world is governed, less 
by the direct influence of known and fixed truths, 
than by variable feeling, reverberated from all sides ; 
just as the temperature of the atmosphere is main- 
tained, not by the full sunshine, but by the radiation 
of heat from all surfaces on earth. Men individual- 
ly — or at least those who are open to moral influ- 
ence at all, act in a manner which represents, not 
their individual acquaintance with what is right, but 
that diflused sense of right which a few, who in- 
tensely feel it, have shed around them. 

Thus it is that every powerful impulse communi- 
cated to the social mass by energetic minds repro- 
duces itself, until even the few almost lose their 
distinction of feeling more than others, and of think- 
ing more justly ; because they have brought the 
many to think and feel with them. This has hap- 
pened several times within the last fifty years. 

How much soever there may be still to lament in 
the moral condition of this country ; yet those who 
are able to recall, with distinctness, the state of 
opinion, of feeling, and of manners, in particular 
respects, about the close of the last century, must 
acknowledge that great progress has been made, 
if not in reforming the mass of the people, yet in 



154 ON SPIRITUAL 

bringing better modes. of thinking, and purer and 
more humane sentiments into credit, and in securing 
for them an undisputed influence. Much has been 
done within the compass of forty years, having the 
aspect of a preparatory work, and the full effect of 
which may be expected to appear, like the sudden 
verdure and fertility of a northern summer, at the 
moment when a new promulgation of great truths 
— an uncontradicted expansion of evangelic doctrine, 
shall throw fresh life into the Christian body. 

The grievous evils which affect the mass of the 
people — their ignorance, recklessness, and misery, 
have so been made the subjects of anxious con- 
sideration of late, and have so, in their frightful 
details been explored, and attested, and so mea- 
sured in their vast>extent, and so spread to view in 
their particulars, that, without an hour's delay, the 
remedy would be applied, and the true means of 
renovation zealously employed, were but the middle 
and upper classes — through the Divine mercy — to 
awake to a Christian feeling in this behalf. May 
we assume that the preparation foreshows such an 
awakening to be at hand ? 

The contributions, labours, sacrifices, demanded 
by a Christian care of the mass of the people, and 
which it must seem extravagant to expect, while 
whatever is needed for such purposes is to be 
wrung, by the importunities of a few, from the in- 



CHRISTIANITY. 155 

difference or reluctance of the many — such aids 
would flow in as a mighty river, if an accordant 
evangelic feeling were to spread itself among those 
who already come within the influence of Christian 
instruction. Great truths once recognised cordially 
by a Christianized community, and then the ardent 
benevolence which lately w^as the distinction of 
those who are benevolent by constitution, becomes 
the common sentiment of many ; and a generous 
glow of charity which had appeared like a hectic 
spot, now gives the colour of florid health to the 
social body. Sentiments of justice and kindness 
(hardly to be distinguished when both are vivid) 
kindling from heart to heart, and lit up by inter- 
changed sympathies, whatever is well proved to be 
just, kind, and reasonable is borne forward, as by 
a tide ; whereas, while the mass of society is stag- 
nant, things good and just, if carried at all, are car- 
ried as by the force of a hurricane ; and in such 
instances, although the triumph of humanity is joy- 
fully hailed, the result disappoints the hopes it had 
excited. 

When not springing from great truths — and 
therefore not truly Christian in principle, the best- 
intended reforms of morals have not merely failed 
of effecting their object ; but have brought upon 
society the most terrible reactions ; as if to compen- 
sate the Patron of evil for some temporary re- 



156 ON SPIRITUAL 

straints, by a wild outbreak of licentiousness, not to 
be repressed in a century ! 

This in fact has been the melancholy story, again 
and again, of attempted reformations in morals, 
through the successive periods of Christian history ; 
and surely this mass of experiments, prornpted 
often by benevolence, but unwisely contrived, and 
unhappily concluded, should avail to teach some 
caution to those who are zealously labouring to 
effect the suppression of flagrant evils hy factitious 
means ; or if by means lawful, yet not in accord- 
ance with the first principle of Christianity, con- 
sidered as a scheme of ethics. Christian morality 
knows nothing of reforms that do not spring from 
an inner impulse — even the impulse of a Christian 
faith ; nor admits such as are imposed by a power 
acting upon the surface of human nature, and work- 
ing on toward the centre. 

There is too much reason to fear that, when 
Christian energies are set to work in this introverted 
direction, which is not proper to them, the mischief 
intended to be removed, is pent up only, and gath- 
ers both heat and expansive force during its short 
season of compression, which shall teach us our 
error by the tremendous impetuosity of its explo- 
sion. 

As on the present occasion we at once challenge 
entire independence, and disdain every ambiguity. 



CHRISTIANITY. 157 

we cannot do less than plainly express the opinion 
that the benevolent, and no doubt greatly successful 
endeavours now making to repress the use of 
intoxicating liquors — we must not say to promote 
temperance ; for temperance is altogether another 
matter — these endeavours, involving pleas and pre- 
texts which common sense resents, might well bear 
to be seriously reconsidered ; and placed on a 
basis of principles truly and distinctively Chris- 
tian. 

Two courses are highly dangerous in morals ; 
nay, we must say, are of fatal tendency, and are 
sure to turn virtue back upon itself, with loss and 
discredit* The first is to teach men, either direct- 
ly, or by a clear implication, that it is vain for 
them^ such as they are, to hope to become virtuous, 
or to control their passions, with a uniform and 
religious governance of the lower nature by the 
higher. The second error is to suggest to them 
the belief, or to teach it, that they may become 
virtuous on some other than the highest principles. 

The first error promotes the sordid ethics of 
interest or expediency ; the real meaning of which 
is, that, if a man can but by any dexterity evade ill 
consequences to himself, it matters nothing whether 
his bosom be the residence of an angel, or the cage 
of seven demons. 

The second of these errors, should it pervade a 
14 



158 ON SPIRITITAL 

(Community, would have the effect, if we might use 
the figure, of bleeding Truth to death ; for it would 
bring about such a contempt of pf^inciple, as must 
end in leaving society to be governed by the most 
ifrivolous of all motives — those of conventional de- 
cency — courtesy, heartless honour, and a varnished 
lelfishness. 

But Christianity, as a system of morals, while it 
rejects any partial and interested concession to vir- 
tue, implying disaffection to virtue's self, and com* 
mands every man to be religiously viftuou$, not 
factiously abstinent ; opens to all the means of be- 
coming so, by surrendering themselves to its own 
efficacious truths. Not only is a conventional or 
arbitrary morality incomplete^ as compared with 
Christian morality ; for it is unlawful — it is pro- 
hibited — it is condemned, as an insult, at once to 
the Law, and to the Mercy of Heaven. 

Here then we make our stand in behalf of Spiri- 
tual Christianity, considered as a means of pro- 
ducing genuine virtue ; and we affirm this to be its 
first characteristic — That it attaches a sove- 

RElGiS" IMPORTANCE TO TrUTH, AS FURNISHING THE 
ONLY SOLID SUPPORT FOR THE MOTIVES OF SELF- 
GOVERNMENT, PURITY, AND CHARITY. 

Every other notion of Christianity — every scheme 
of piety and virtue which we must think ourselves 
bound to except against as unchristian, or as 



CHRISTIANITY. 159 

Christian only in a mutilated sense, has either pre- 
sented a lifeless body of precepts and prohibitions ; 
or, if it has rested upon motives and principles, these 
have not been those of the Gospel, which are at 
once deep, serious and happy. There have been 
systems of morality, called Christian, some of them 
indulgent, and gay in their aspect ; and others aus- 
tere ; but Christian morality, springing as it does 
from its own truths, is at once far more profound 
than the severe scheme, and far more happy than 
the lax and frivolous scheme. 

But at this point an acknowledgment must be 
made which is due to the thorough impartiaUty we 
profess. When we speak, as we are compelled to 
do, of two parties, now ostensibly opposed, one to 
the other ; — the one promoting what we cannot but 
condemn as superstitious, and deficient in evangelic 
feeling ; and the other party as maintaining evan- 
gelic principles of the highest importance ; it must 
by no means be thence inferred that we mean to 
represent the one party as altogether to be reprobat- 
ed, and the other party, as altogether to be approved, 
in matters of Christian practice. Truth and virtue, 
we do not hold to be chartered to companies : they 
are possessed only in part by those who possess the 
most of them ; and they are possessed in some good 
measure, even by many who must yet stand con* 
demned as capitally wrong in theology. 



160 ON SPIRITUAL 

Men, serious and upright, cannot easily be thought 
altogether to have failed while labouring to give 
prominence to some one element of Christian virtue, 
which their opponents may have too little regarded ; 
and concerning which these, their opponents, might 
do well to take lessons at their lips. 

It is so, as we presume, in the great controversy 
which now agitates the Church. Assuredly we be- 
lieve the revivers of the mongrel divinity, and dan- 
gerous practices of the ancient church, to be pursu- 
ing a course in the last degree pernicious ; and so 
far, those who oppose them in this endeavour are 
performing an urgent and important duty, and in the 
discharge of which we could only wish them suc- 
cess. Yet should it be regarded as an ominous 
triumph, even of evangelic principles, if they were 
so to prevail as to drive the chariot of controversial 
war over the field, at once crushing their antagonists, 
and demolishing what these may have done in re- 
freshing particular branches of Christian morality. 
Rather let us put on a Christian humility, and be 
sincerely willing to learn, even from those whom we 
strenuously oppose, to think anew of whatsoever 
things are pure, grave, seemly, just, and of good 
report : — whatsoever things give evidence of self- 
command, self-renunciation, stem assiduity, and 
patient endurance of evil. 

While devoutly desiring to see the corruptions of 



CHRISTIANITY. 161 

the ancient church warded off from the protestant 
pale, far should we be from desiring to witness, either 
the personal discomfiture, or disparagement of the 
restorers of these errors ; or such a reckless extinc- 
tion of their endeavours as should leave room for no 
salutary reaction to take effect upon evangelic bo- 
dies. Such a corrective influence, it ought to be 
acknowledged, has long been greatly needed ; and 
should be welcomed as seasonable. 

A willingness to receive correction in matters of 
Christian moraUty from our theological opponents, 
may well be founded upon a consideration of the 
fact, that, while the unhappy divisions which distract 
the Christian commonwealth are in part redeemed 
by their tendency to preserve, and to give the greater 
accuracy to dogmatic principles, they have a most 
unhappy influence, as well in diverting the minds of 
Christian men from the simple and well understood 
elements of morality, as in lowering, on all sides, the 
due impression of the sacred importance of thes^ 
simple elements. Not only are our thoughts so much 
distracted by controversy that we become far too 
little mindful of the tempers and virtues which 
should recommend a Christian profession ; but th^ 
solemn sanctions of morality lose their influence 
over our minds. We become more eager than 
conscientious — more acute than sincere, and more 
zealous than holy. 
14* 



162 ON SPIRITUAL 

Whoever comes forward therefore, to renovate 
any one branch of Christian ethics, even though it 
be on defective principles, should meekly be listened 
to, and the movement w^hich he originates should be 
considered, so far as it may extend, as if it were — - 
which it may in fact be, an admonition from the 
Lord, calling upon all " to do their first works," and 
to repent of any remissness, or unfaithfulness, with 
which they may be chargeable. 

It is trite to say that, while the human mind con- 
tinues what it is, men must differ, not merely in taste 
and intellectual preferences, but even in some of 
those matters of belief which should be under the 
control of mere reason : the supposition of an age 
of uniformity is therefore chimerical ; but the sup- 
position—nay, the positive hope of an age of Chris- 
tian concord, and of cordial combination is not chi- 
merical ; for it is identical with the belief of the 
truth of Christianity itself, and of its triumph in the 
world. 

But when this era of Christian harmony commen- 
ces, and when Christian men become " of one mind, 
and of one heart," there will take place, as we 
cannot doubt, a surprising reflux of feeling toward 
the great matters of morality. The serious obliga- 
tions of justice, temperance, purity, and charity, 
will then be felt in another manner ; and will come 
home to the conscience, not merely as realities^ but 



CHRISTIANITY. 163 

almost as novelties ; and Christian men will be fain 
to think that, heretofore, they have been dreaming. 
Ever must it be true that Christian virtue is the 
direct product of Christian Truths ; but then, w^hen 
these are no longer held in agitation, they will take 
their effect, and produce their fruits, with an abun- 
dance not heretofore imagined. More than two or 
three passages of Scripture, bearing upon the exact 
retributions of a future life, might be referred to, 
which hitherto have, in a manner, slept on the sacred 
page ; while eager controversies on points less nearly 
connected with our welfare, have engaged all atten- 
tion. It cannot be doubted that these ominous inti- 
mations are to have their turn, and to take the place 
due to them in the minds of Christians. When thus 
regarded. Christian morals may assume almost a 
new aspect. 

That we have not misunderstood the Christian 
morality, as intended to work its effects by the latent 
operation of great principles rather than by the force 
of precepts and prohibitions, appears from the re- 
markable quality of our Lord's method of teaching 
morals — namely, that of enouncing principles of 
conduct in such a form as absolutely to exclude the 
supposition that he intended to deliver positive 

enactments. 
In each instance some principle of his divine 



164 ON SPIRITUAL 

morality is presented to us, so stated or so exem- 
plified, as that it can be available for our guidance, 
only as illustrating a principle ; and so as to imply 
what would be incompatible with other precepts, or 
even plainly immoral, if it were understood in any 
other manner. '* Unless a man hate his father and 
his mother, he cannot," says Christ, '^ be my dis- 
ciple." Who can for a moment imagine that this, 
and many similar injunctions, are positive laws, or 
statutes absolute ? As well give a Hteral import to 
his injunction to ** eat his flesh, and drink his blood." 

If it were objected that, in thus reading our Lord's 
system of morals, we are lowering the import of his 
commands, we reply that we are not lowering, but 
rather heightening it ; for we give these precepts a 
far more comprehensive interpretation, by this 
means ; and send them in upon the centre of the 
moral faculties — upon the conscience, instead of 
leaving them to rankle, as otherwise the)'^ must do, 
upon the surface, where they can effect no good. 

In all sincerity, and inasmuch as^ without intend- 
ing offence to any, we must allow our argument to 
take effect where it may, we should here advert to 
that error in ethics which has been the besetting 
fault of many seriously-minded persons, in every 
age ; — we mean that of frittering down the evan- 
gelic principles of morality, into specific precepts, 
which, in that form, are either impracticable, or 



CHRISTIANITY. 165 

frivolous. What is the consequence ? Thus un- 
derstood — or rather misunderstood, the law of 
Christ is made to stand opposed, not to the bad 
customs of the world, but to the very constitution 
of society ; and is made to forbid, with equal stern- 
ness, what is indifferent or innocent, and what is 
unquestionably vicious. But nothing tends so 
certainly to merge the distinction between good 
and evil, as to prohibit things indifferent^ or appa- 
rently so, with a Draco's severity. In truth this 
method of literally interpreting our Lord's moral 
discourses, offers to the world so grotesque a 
portraiture of Christianity, that it is likely to be 
regarded as nothing better than a system of punc- 
tilious scrupulosities, and frivolous evasions. 

** The words that I speak unto you," said our 
Lord, " are spirit and truth." And have not all 
facts established his conclusion — that ^* the letter 
indeed killeth, but the spirit giveth life ;" for in 
every case in which men of an ardent and serious 
temper have taken up the letter instead of the spirit 
of Christian morality, they themselves, or their 
immediate successors, have fallen, as we might 
say, lifeless, into the arms of formality ; — each 
generation becoming more and more forgetful of 
vital truths. 

But now, if Christianity, as a scheme of morals, 
is intended to produce its effect rather by principles 



166 ONSPIRITUAL 

than precepts, we reach our second position; 
namely, that it does so by its oneness of prin- 
ciple ; or its concentration of motives. Chris- 
tian morahty is an emanation — not from two or 
more centres, but from one. 

Is it not a fact, well understood in the philosophy 
of human nature^ that, wherever we find a high 
degree of moral energy, of any kind, and whether 
it be good or evil in itself, it is always the energy 
of concentration ? Force, in conduct and character, 
whether it be benevolent or malignant, is the force 
of Unity, or the sovereignty of a single motive, or 
of a balance of motives, well combined. True is 
it in morals, that " a double-minded man" — a man 
acting, now from the impulse of one motive, now 
from that of another — " is unstable in all his ways " 
— easily diverted from his path, or as easily over- 
thrown upon it. Ought we not therefore to look for 
this same concentration in the morality of Christ? 
If it is to be full of force— if it is to be a principle 
of power, and equal to the services and sacrifices 
of the Christian life, it must possess this charac- 
teristic. 

What remains then is to seek the true centre of 
Christian morals ; — to find its law of concentration. 
Having found it, we shall do better to leave it full in 
view, and boldly expressed in a few words, than to 
dilate it in a lengthened discussion. This then 



CHRlSfiA]fTITY. 167 

must be the characteristic of Christian morahty-^ 
That it springs all from one centre ; and that centre 
the same which is the centre of all light and warmth 
in the scheme of Christian doctrine. 

If indeed man be capable of generous and happy 
emotions, and if it be only when acting under the 
influence of such emotions that he puts forth what^ 
ever energy his individual constitution may admit 
of, then it is certain that no principle of duty which 
does not deeply touch the emotions of love and 
gratitude, can become a principle of concentration, 
or be of avail to bring forth the entire power of the 
character. 

It is thus that a generous motive, ruling the mind, 
even if it be a very faulty one, and liable perhaps 
to the condemnation of the moralist, nevertheless is 
found to carry men further in arduous and perilous 
services than they are ever carried by a mere sense 
of duty. What sort of virtue is that which springs 
from, and is always regulated by a calculation of 
consequences, turning in upon the man's insulated 
welfare — or upon what he supposes to be his wel- 
fare ? This is not morality — but arithmetic. Nor 
do we hesitate to afl^m that a community would 
have more to fear, in which such a principle were 
to prevail, and to be openly and generally recog- 
nized and formally taught, than one in which morals 
were actually at a very low ebb, while yet the true 



168 ON SPIRITUAL 

principle of virtue was in theory admitted ; for it is 
clearly better that men should still be men, even 
though bad, than that they should have become 
mere automatons of selfishness. 

There may be other, and loftier motives of virtue, 
less to be condemned than the atheistic doctrine of 
expediency, and which may in fact go far in car* 
rying men through the duties of common life 
unblamably ; but, failing in warmth and animation, 
and not so springing from the centre of the moral 
faculties as to embrace and harmonize its emotions, 
they are little to be accounted of ;— they are moralu 
ties, not virtue ; for virtue is one ; nor can it be 
such, if it allow any principal element of our nature 
to remain in a dormant condition, or if it repress 
the free exercise of any* 

The Truths, which in the preceding Lecture were 
affirmed to be of the very substance of Christianity, 
being assumed as certain, how can they be regard- 
ed otherwise than as the ground or reason of the 
motives of Christian morality ? — they must, if they 
are believed to be true. Can they be cordially ad- 
mitted, and yet take any other position than the 
highest in our regard, or affect us in any other than 
the most sovereign manner ? 

Christian virtue then, can be nothing less than 
a concentrated love, or devotion of the soul to the 
service of Him to whom we owe, not natural life 



CHRISTIANITY. 169 

merely, but spiritual life. Christian morality is an 
affectionate loyalty to Him who, besides that he is 
our rightful sovereign, has acquired every claim to 
our duty and affection by having exchanged posi- 
tions with us, when we were '' without help," and 
under condemnation. 

Unless we had been guilty and helpless, no such 
intervention as that which the Christian scheme 
supposes, could have had place. But if the ruin 
of man, and his recovery by the personal interven- 
tion of the divine Saviour be both true, then must 
it be granted that thenceforward genuine Chris- 
tian virtue, while it is deepened and chastised by 
a recollection of the misery whence we have been 
rescued, is warmed, and receives a boundless im- 
pulse from an affection, directed with the distinct- 
ness of personal love, toward the Saviour, and who 
is now become, by every title, the sovereign of the 
heart. 

By the most direct inference, the one motive of 
affectionate loyalty, and a humble expectation of 
winning the approval of Him who is supreme in 
our regards, must be held sufficient to sustain our 
constancy in any service, which that Sovereign is 
known to approve, or which we believe will be gra- 
ciously accepted by Him at our hands. And not 
only services, but sufferings '' for Christ's sake," 
even to the endurance of fiery trials, and death, have 
15 



170 ON SPIRITUAL 

often, from the same motive, been stripped of their 
terrors. 

What more then can we need in behalf of the 
most comprehensive, or of the most refined scheme 
of morals, than is fully secured by this motive of 
loyalty to a sovereign — such as is the Saviour of 
the world ? 

From the evangelic history is drawn the Idea of 
all that is beautiful in virtue ; and from the precep- 
tive parts of the Scriptures the explicit rules of 
morality ; and from the doctrinal parts, the impul- 
sive principle of affectionate obedience. "With a 
system of ethics, itself faultless as a definite rule, 
may it not be afl&rmed, that a loving loyalty to such 
sovereign, at once Teacher and Saviour, embraces 
every motive that can tend to secure a correspond- 
ent moral harmony and completeness, in the conduct 
and temper of his subjects and disciples ? The 
Christian ethics, thus made to relate to the personal 
character and will of Christ, has in a high degree 
that concentration and oneness of motive, which is 
needed to give force and simplicity to virtue. A 
generous animation, and a tender affection, a well 
defined personal sentiment, fixed on one whose own 
moral elevation leaves nothing that is great, pure, 
or beautiful, to be added to it or even imagined, 
give to Christian morality a power and warmth, to 
which no other system makes any approach. 



CHRISTIANITY. 171 

The simplest possible test may be applied to the 
motive and rule of Christian morality as thus stated. 
Let any one, after furnishing his mind with a dis- 
tinct conception of the personal character of Christ, 
compel himself to bring his own conduct, disposi- 
tions, and converse, throughout any one day, to this 
gauge, namely, its supposed conformity, in prin- 
ciple, with what we may call the style of our Lord's 
behaviour. This criterion will be found to reach to 
the extent of the most arduous and unusual duties, 
as well as to fit the most ordinary. If we are com- 
pelled to grant that the application of such a test 
would carry us forward always toward whatever 
is pure, and just, and kind, have we not virtually 
granted that Christianity is divine ? 

What then remains is to give impulse to the rule 
we acknowledge to be good. And this must be by 
admitting into the heart, in all its power, that faith 
which connects the soul with the Saviour, by the 
vital agency of the Spirit of grace. Then it is that 
abstract virtue becomes embodied, and lives. The 
office of the Holy Spirit, as we learn by the apos- 
tolic word is — '' to take of the things of Christ" — 
whatever is his distinctively^ and '' to reveal them 
to us." In other words, to expand the divine pat- 
tern of all perfection before our contracted faculties, 
part by part, as we are able to receive it ; — to con- 
vey to us the lesson of perfection, in morsels, and 



172 ON SPIRITUAL 

to render us, by a gradual process of assimilation, 
*^ new creatures in Christ Jesus." 

But this office of the Holy Spirit has its own 
peculiar tendency to promote the purification of the 
heart. How impressive is the apostolic appeal to 
Christians, '* What ! know ye not that your bodies 
are the temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth 
in you ?" and again, the injunction not '^ to grieve the 
Holy Spirit." It is when Christianity is spiritually 
understood, and when whatever tends to substitute 
symbols for realities is rejected, that a trinitarian 
faith is brought to bear with effect upon the under- 
standing, the heart and the life. If this faith be 
doubtingly or distrustfully held, is it any wonder 
that it is found to be ineffective ? or if it be held in 
conjunction with notions which either oppress the 
heart, or which favour the propensity to rest in for- 
malities, then ought we to suppose it can exhibit its 
proper influence ? 

But we are speaking of a spiritual and cordial 
trinitarian faith, and then we affirm it to be the 
basis of the only virtue w^hich deserves the name — a 
serious, reverential, happy, and affectionate devo- 
tion of the whole nature to God the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Spirit. Christian virtue is the habit, 
the motive, and the act of the soul meditating upon 
'^ the love of God," and *^ the grace of the Lord 



CHRISTIANITY. 173 

Jesus," and enjoying " the communion of the Holy 
Spirit." 

Let it be remarked, that apostoHc trinitarian doc- 
trine — so utterly unlike the crabbed definitions of a 
wrangling and unevangelic age, brings the inscruta- 
ble mystery of the divine nature to bear immediately 
upon the affections, under an aspect of pleasurable 
emotion. How little has this been regarded by 
angry disputants ! — How grievously have those mis- 
understood apostohc orthodoxy, who have pursued 
each other to the death, because not consenting to 
the same jargon as themselves ! We cannot too 
attentively regard the apostolic method of teaching 
this great truth — of shedding it into the heart. Our 
Creed, if derived from the Scriptures, speaks to 
us of '' the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of 
the love of God, and of the communion of the Holy 
Ghost." This is the orthodoxy which, when cor- 
dially entertained, impels Christians to love each 
other and all men, and to abound in good works, 
at sacrifices and offerings, with which ^' God is well 
pleased." 

But it is reasonably asked — if such be the in- 
tensity and excellence of the motives which you 
affirm to spring from an evangelic faith, how do 
you explain the frequent and lamentable instances 
in which those who adopt these motives, and talk 
of them perpetually, are found wanting in the first 
15* 



174 ON SPIRITUAL 

duties of morality, and guilty even of outraging its 
plainest requirements ? Nothing is more simple : 
such persons, and the number of such is never small, 
and in times of formality or of controversial agita- 
tion, like the present, it v^ill be large — such per- 
sons, unhappily, while they have surrendered their 
hold of the common, or as they would term them, 
of the w^orldly and unevangelic motives of virtue, 
are very far from having come into any real com- 
munion with those motives of which they so fluent- 
ly speak. They are in fact unprovided with any 
efficacious motives of conduct ; and they fall, while 
those less doctrinally enlightened than themselves, 
stand : they are, in fact, the easiest of all the vic- 
tims of temptation : — if the first assault upon virtue 
be repelled from fear of shame, or from mere habit ; 
—the second, or the third, prevails over the feeble 
resistance of a mortality which has no basis, and 
no' vitality. But when we speak of the efficacy of 
the principles of Christian morals, we must mean, 
assuredly, nothing less than the actual possession 
of that motive, which we affirm to be the impulse 
of all virtue: A thousand instances of failure and 
delinquency, among the professors of evangelic prin- 
ciples, prove only that the profession was all that 
had been attained by the individual. 

It is manifest that a principle of morals so specific 
and peculiar as the one we have named, cannot exist 



CHRISTIANITY. 175 

in power apart from a clear recognition of that prime 
truth of Christianity whence immediately it springs. 
Any doctrine, therefore, the tendency of which is 
to throw obscurity upon this first article of belief 
— Justification through faith in the propitiatory 
work of Christ ; or any religious practice, the 
effect of which is to mingle what is human with 
what is divine, in the matter of our acceptance 
with God, must operate, so far, to chill the reli- 
gious affections, and to bring Christian morality, 
in the same proportion, down to the level of that 
morality which is unchristian — whether philosophic, 
or superstitious. It is on this ground, therefore, 
that we claim, without hesitation, the ethical beauty 
of Christianity, as proper and peculiar to an evan- 
gelic faith ; because every element of Christian 
virtue bears relation to a correspondent element of 
Christian doctrine ; and whatever darkens the one, 
enfeebles the other. 

A motive of virtue, so far as it may be peculiar, 
will express itself in its own manner. The results 
of two motives, themselves difiering greatly, will 
not be the same. Now the Christian morahty, 
specified as such in the New Testament, has this 
very peculiarity, which we should look for, if 
indeed its principle be the one we have named. 
Most remarkable is it, that though our Lord, before 
his having accompHshed the work of redemption, 



176 ON SPIRITUAL 

refers but incidentally to the great evangelic truth 
which was to be ratified by his death and resurrec- 
tion ; yet precludes all misunderstanding as to the 
principle of the system of morals which he was 
giving to the world, by very clearly resting the 
validity or acceptableness of even the most ordinary 
act of kindness or humanity, on the fact of its having 
been performed from a motive of affection toward 
himself ; and by declaring that he regards any want 
of sympathy toward his suffering members, in this 
peculiar light, as being an affront to himself. 

As is the principle of virtue, so are its expres- 
sions. All benevolence toward mankind at large, if 
it be Christian benevolence, is the love of man, for 
Christ's sake, even as of those who are redeemed 
by his precious blood. Can it be doubted then that 
the Christian's affection toward his Christian breth- 
ren must have the same peculiarity, and possess it 
in the most decisive manner ; or that any want of 
this specific affection, or any backwardness in the 
expression of it, toward Christ's disciples, is a 
grave fault, a fault rendering very ambiguous, to 
say the best, our personal Christianity ? 

And now let us remember that although Chris- 
tianity be a religion of principles rather than of pre- 
cepts — yet it has its precepts ; — it has a law — a law 
summarily containing all law — the royal law of love, 
and of love among Christians, as such. " If any 



CHRISTIANITY. 177 

man love God, let him love his brother also.'' 
'*This is my command," said the Saviour — a com- 
mand given before his sufferings, and issued anew 
from his throne in the heavens, " that ye love one 
another." 

He who abstained from prohibiting some things 
which we cannot doubt he intended to exclude from 
his church, and who left many things unsaid which 
we are forward to put into his lips. He has said — 
That those who are wanting in love to their Chris- 
tian brethren are not to be accounted his disciples. 

Under every code of law and system of morals, 
however well defined it may be in its principles, or 
skilfully expounded in its particular applications, 
occasions must frequently be presented, by the ever- 
varying aspects of human affairs, in which some 
single enactment seems to contravene another ; or in 
which a general principle of law is apparently inter- 
cepted in its operation by some positive prohibition. 
Now this being an inconvenience to which every 
institution wherein man acts a part must be liable, 
a universal necessity arises for admitting a rule of 
adaptation, by the aid of which the social machine 
may be exempted from ruinous collisions of part 
with part. Such a rule must have respect to the 
manifest intention, or the spirit, of the code or insti- 
tution, considered as a whole ; or to the known and 



178 ON SPIRITUAL 

recorded mind of the legislator ; or to some broad 
principle of expediency. 

In any such instance it is to be assumed that 
some things are of supreme importance; while 
some are important relatively only, or conditionally ; 
and that whatever comes under this latter descrip- 
tion should give way, rather than that a sovereign 
axiom, or an absolute and wide-extending precept 
should be dishonoured. 

The application of these unquestionable princi- 
ples to the Christian Institute, and to the conduct of 
Christians, one toward another, is obvious. The 
law of Christ, which enjoins his followers first to 
love each other fervently, and without reserve or 
disguise ; and then to recognise each other as Chris- 
tians, and to abide in communion one with another, 
is the most explicit of all his commands ; — it is the 
law the most solemnly promulgated ; it is the law 
that is reiterated oftener than any other. — It is a law 
announced as a universal rule of the Christian insti- 
tute ; and therefore always to be respected, rather 
than any enactment, less comprehensive, which 
may at any time seem to clash with it. 

Moreover this law, not only of love, but of com- 
munion, or of visible fellowship, is declared to be 
the one charagtertstic of the Christian institute ; 
and submission to it is made the condition at once of 
Christ's promised presence with his church, and of 



CHRISTIANITY. 179 

the conversion of the world by the means of the 
church. 

Ought not those then to look well to the course 
they are pursuing, who, on the plea of a conscientious 
regard to some special enactment, or of the adhe- 
rence to some institution which, at the most, is but 
a means to an end, are, and in a deliberate manner, 
putting contempt upon Christ's first Law — his uni- 
versal and sovereign will ; and on such ground are 
either refusing to recognise and to consort with 
other Christians ; or are even denying the very 
name to those whose only alleged fault is their 
eiTor (if it be an error) on the particular in ques- 
tion? 

Whoever it is that pursues such a course, we 
cannot hesitate to speak of it as in the highest de- 
gree culpable and perilous. It is the fault of these, 
our times ; — a fault from which, however, multi- 
tudes of Christians individually stand clear, by the 
warmth and expansiveness of their personal senti- 
ments, and the (genuine) liberality of their modes 
of action. But as to communities, not one can well 
claim exemption from some blame on this behalf. 

But if the most absolute of Christ's laws be pub- 
licly dishonoured by Christian bodies ; and if, in 
the eye of the world, the mark of unity and love be 
wanting, the serious question presents itself, Wheth- 
er it may be allowable to claim for any body of 



180 • ON SPIRITUAL 

Christians, as such, the praise of possessing and of 
'* holding forth" that Spiritual Christianity of which 
we are speaking ? 

We shall excuse ourselves from the task of dis- 
tinctly replying to so weighty a question — content 
to know that, in whatever way it might be answered 
by the champions of parties, Christ's law of love is 
in fact cordially accepted, and visibly honoured too, 
by no small number of individual Christians, within 
each department of the orthodox and evangelic com* 
monwealth. Even if the visible, or ecclesiastical 
condition of the Christian community be not aus- 
picious, happily its zn^mor condition (as we fully 
believe) is of a far more cheering character : and is 
such as may safely be held to indicate the approach 
of a better exterior, as well as interior mode of com- 
bination. 

A decisive improvement of this sort, or a reno- 
vation of the visible, as well as of the interior con- 
dition of the Christian body, giving open honour to 
Christ's great command, is what remains to be ex- 
pected as the final development of the energies of 
the Gospel ; and which must precede, and would 
bring in, its general triumph in the world. 

To have undertaken to speak of the ethical char- 
acteristics of Spiritual Christianity with an inten- 
tion to abstain from all allusion to that great charac- 
teristic of Christian morals — Christian love, would 



CHRISTIANITY. 181 

have been to compromise momentous truths in a 
most culpable manner. Or to have brought forward 
this leading subject, yet with a timid determination 
to be blind and deaf as to what is passing around 
us ; and by all means to avoid the peril of offending 
any prejudices, would have been to put to shame 
the profession we have more than once made of 
independence and conscientious impartiality. 

But it would have been in a very pecuhar sense 
blameworthy to adopt any such temporizing rule of 
discretion in the present instance, when the task 
which we are engaged to attempt, is,— to exhibit 
the glory and beauty of Christianity as it is found 
in the inspired writings ;-not as it may happen to 
be represented, at a particular time, by this or that 
community. Moreover we are to perform this task 
with an especial view to the feelings and opinions 
of those who are presumed not hitherto to have so 
fully considered the momentous subject of the divine 
origin of the Gospel, as would give it its due influ- 
ence over their convictions. 

Now there can be no doubt that, with very many 
persons of this class— intelligent, observant, and 
candid, who yet are not intimately acquainted, and 
perhaps not in any degree acquainted with the per- 
sonal sentiments of Christian people, the scandal of 
those religious dissensions which of late have be- 
come so obtrusive, operates to excuse them to thera- 
16 



182 ON SPIRITUAL 

selves from the duty of seriously considering the 
claims of the Gospel. If we could only bring to 
view the secret causes of that infidelity which it is 
to be feared, prevails among the educated classes, 
this now named — the scandal arising from religious 
dissensions, would probably appear to be one of the 
most frequent and determinative. 

The advocates of Christianity are no doubt enti- 
tled to the argument they so often resort to, in their 
controversy with its opponents, when they affirm 
that the religion of Christ is rejected because it re- 
proves a vicious course of life. This is tine, but it 
is only a partial truth ; and it would be well if, 
whenever it is advanced, a candid acknowledgment 
were made of the unquestionable fact, that it is the 
*' envy, wrath, strife, malice," and ambition, seen 
to attach to religious bodies, quite as much as the 
pride, or covetousness, or sensuality harbouring in 
the bosom of the infidel, that prevent his submission 
to an argument which he finds himself unable logi- 
cally to refute. 

Such persons — we mean the intelligent, observ- 
ant, and candid, who hold out against the Christian 
evidences on the plea of the unseemly discords of 
professed Christians, are invited to take a wider 
grasp of this particular subject. 

Let such persons maturely consider, first, the 
cbvious fact that Christianity itself condemns as 



CHRISTIANITY. 183 

decisively the evil tempers generated by religious 
disagreements, as it condemns any other immorali- 
ties : clearly itself is a religion of love and meek- 
ness ; and moreover it contains (however little they 
have hitherto been regarded) sufficient and very 
precise provisions, securing to Christians liberty of 
conscience, while cordial fellowship is not disturbed. 
The religion of Christ should therefore bear none 
of the blame accruing from religious strifes. 

But the persons now intended are especially re- 
quested to give attention to those views of Chris- 
tian history which have several times been referred 
to in the course of these Lectures. — Church history 
is the story of the perpetually renewed struggles of 
Truth, Justice, Purity, Love, not merely with the bad 
passions of men individually, not merely with false 
and immoral principles, in the abstract ; but with 
the definite and visible forms under which those bad 
passions, or these immoral principles have, from 
time to time, appeared, as digested and conven- 
tional evils, attaching to the social system. 

With several of these prescriptive mischiefs 
Christianity has wrestled, and has prevailed over 
them ; nor ever again, probably, shall it meet these 
its antagonists, erect. With some others — slavery 
for instance, and the hateful prejudice of colour, it 
is now, and before our eyes contending, nor can 
any who have attentively watched its preceding vie- 



184 ON SPIRITUAL 

tories over the most formidable and deeply in- 
trenched evils, doubt what must be the issue of the 
contest which is now in progress. 

We come then to our immediate subject. It is 
clear that, unless the natural course of human 
affairs were miraculously diverted ; or, in other 
words, unless a direct administration of whatever 
relates to religion, by Heaven's infallible agents — 
such as the papal system assumes for itself, were 
supposed — the conservation of dogmatic truth, and 
the clear definition of it, in all its details, could not 
well be secured otherwise than by the free opposi- 
tions of minds diiferently constituted, and differently 
schooled ; and by the unchecked collisions of bodies, 
independent and separately powerful. Truth has 
miserably suffered whenever such oppositions and 
collisions have been successfully prevented by the 
hand of despotic spirtual power. Absolutely ex- 
cluded they have never been, nor can be ; but they 
go on with little advantage to truth, and with incal- 
culable damage to the social system, and with great 
disturbance to civil affairs, when the two contend- 
ing parties are in the relative positions of tyrants 
and mart3n:s. Who can wish this inevitable con- 
flict, by which truth is conserved, to be maintained 
under conditions so terrible, so precarious, and so 
costly ? 

But the other form of this contest is that which 
attaches to the present condition of civil society 



CHRISTIANITY. 185 

and under which the deep rehgious convictions of 
minds, diversely constituted, and more diversely- 
trained, are suffered to work and to heave, exempt- 
ed from any external restraints. This then is the 
dispensation through which we are now passing ; — 
a dispensation indeed of peculiar trial to the con- 
stancy and temper of Christian men, as well as of 
sad scandal toward the irreligious many. Yet it is 
to a great extent, as we have said, remedied, or its 
ill effects obviated, by the individual piety and de- 
vout sentiments of multitudes of private Christians. 
These individuals are so many, and the feeling 
among them so decisively tends toward a happier 
condition which should allow of an unintercepted 
fellowship df love, that the actual approach of it 
seems to be more than dimly indicated. 

The season of unrestrained dissension, with all 
its evils, when it shall have had its time and ful- 
filled its purpose, in the elucidation and establish- 
ment of dogmatic truth, shall pass away, and the 
great and characteristic principle of the Gospel — its 
law of love, shall then — ^just as the other moral 
energies of the same Gospel have successively ex- 
panded their forces, and have triumphed — triumph 
also itself, as well in the bosoms of Christians in- 
dividually, as in the Christian commonwealth, and 
visibly exhibit on earth the pattern of the order and 
unity of heaven. 
16* 



THE 

FOURTH LE CTURE 



SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY THE HOPE OF THE WORLD AT THE 
PRESENT MOMENT. 



THE FOURTH LECTURE. 



While showing, as we propose now to do, that 
the principles of Spiritual Christianity, Doctrinal 
and Ethical, and which have been advanced in the 
preceding Lectures, furnish the ground of a bright 
hope of a much improved moral condition of the 
human family, we shall carefully abstain from rest- 
ing our argument upon questionable anticipations of 
any kind, whether political, philosophical, or such as 
might be derived from interpretations of unfulfilled 
Scripture prophecies. 

What we now propose is very simple, and our 
argument is direct, and our conclusions scarcely to 
be disputed, if only those principles are granted to 
be true, which already we have insisted upon as 
sufficiently established. 

We take up then, in turn, three or four of those 
elements of Spiritual Christianity which attach to it 
as an impulse of action ; and after briefly exhibiting 
each, in its connexion with the truths whence it 



190 ON SPIRITUAL 

springs, shall ask whether, supposing such motives 
or principles powerfully to affect the hearts of Chris- 
tians, throughout a community, they would not aiford 
a ground of the very happiest anticipations which 
the philanthropist can entertain for the world at 
large ? 

We shall advance into the midst of our argument, 
after briefly adverting to two subjects, directly relat- 
ed to it, and which at the present moment are of 
urgent importance. The first of these is the slender 
and very questionable value of any other hope than 
that which Christianity furnishes, of seeing the wel- 
fare of the human family materially promoted, either 
in a physical or a moral sense. 

Does it appear that Civilization alone, with' its 
intercourse and trafic — its arts, and its "useful" 
sciences — its town-crowding industry, and its disor- 
derly peopling of wildernesses — its hurry, and im- 
patience of restraint — its intensity of individual will, 
and its contempt of authority — its uncontrollable 
sway of the masses — its unlooked-for upturns and 
reverses — its passionate pursuit of momentary ad- 
vantages, and its appetite for such gratifications as 
may be snatched in all haste ; — does it appear that 
civilization alone (Christian influence not consider- 
ed) is likely much to promote the personal and home- 
felicity of the millions it is summoning into life ? — 
Judging of what is future, from w^hat we see 



CHRISTIANITY. 191 

around us, dare we look to mere civilization as wor- 
thy to be trusted with the moral, or even with the 
physical well-being of the human family ; and with 
the guardianship of the generation next coming up ? 
— Dare we, if we had the infant human race in our 
arms — dare we turn ourselves to that care-worn 
personage, our modern Civilization, sitting at her 
factory gate, and say to her — ^^ Take this child, and 
nurse it for me ?" 

It is indeed by no means easy, either to define cor- 
rectly what we mean by civilization, a term vaguely 
embracing a vast assemblage of heterogeneous 
elements ; — or completely to sever, in our minds, the 
notion of mere civilization, from that of those moral 
and religious influences w^hich, in fact, are, in this 
country, so intimately blended with every thing 
around us. 

The nearest approach, perhaps, which we could 
make to a distinct conception of what civilization is, 
as severed from all Christian influences, would be 
effected by going into the heart of some of the con- 
tinental communities ; — might we, without offence, 
say France, where, while all the elements of national 
improvement, in wealth, science, literature, refine- 
ment, are in high activity, the concomitant influence 
of Christianity, though not absolutely wanting, is 
reduced to the smallest dimensions imaginable, if it 
is to exist at all. 



192 ON SPIRITUAL 

In looking then to mere civilization as exhibited in 
a country like France, we must affirm that the issue 
of the social movement, considered as tending to 
promote the personal and domestic well-being of 
the mass of the people, is altogether ambiguous, and 
such as may give ground, with an equal appearance 
of reason, to the darkest, as to the brightest antici- 
pations. And then if we were to look to such a 
country as a centre of benevolent endeavours for the 
diffusion of happiness through the world, could we 
name any definite grounds of hope, whatever, in 
this respect ? Or is it not nearly as reasonable to 
suppose that light, truth, peace, humanity, should 
emanate from China, as from France, and thence 
cover the earth ? 

In referring to this particular instance, we are 
influenced by no national prejudice ; and in truth 
w^ould entertain the hope that France, admitting at 
length Christian Truth, may yet awake, to run 
abreast with England — as in wealth, philosophy, 
literature, so in the enlightened labours of universal 
philanthropy. But if so, it will not be as a civilized, 
but as a Christianized country, that she will do it. 

Mere Civilization is too likely to ally herself to 
that atheistic and sensual philosophy which com- 
ports so well with the temper and aims of a commer- 
cial people. We mean the philosophy which regards 
man simply as one of the mammaha, and as distin- 



CHRISTIANITY. 193 

guished from others of his order only by a loftier 
facial angle, by some ounces more of the cerebral 
mass, by the jointing of his thumb, and by the pos- 
session of a heel bone. But how is such a union — 
such a conspiracy, to be deprecated ! Too soon 
might busy Civilization, bent on gain, take AnimaJ 
Philosophy into her estabhshment, as the most com- 
pliant and serviceable of her creatures ; and this 
shrewd minion, teaching her mistress to blush at no 
well calculated and undoubtedly profitable cruelty, 
would undertake to prove that those who draw^ prizes 
in the lottery of life are unwise if they spoil their 
peace by any compunctious sympathies toward the 
less fortunate millions of the species. 

If we imagine all Christian feeling and Christian 
truth to be withdrawn, the present is a time of high 
intensity indeed, in the social system ; but of very 
low moral temperature ; nor can we confide in any 
disposition which is the proper growth of such a 
time, as an impulse of benevolence, or as affording 
any ground of hope for the melioration of the lot of 
man. 

But we turn to the second of those subjects which 
we mentioned as incidental to our argument. This 
is the altogether peculiar position which we, the 
people of England, at this passing moment occupy, 
in relation to the human family. Has not the part 
of an Elder Brother of this great family actually 
17 



194 ON SPIRITUAL 

fallen upon the English race ? and have not the soli- 
citudes of such a relationship actually become ours ? 
Are we not by many interests, and by motives higher 
than any interests, compelled, in some measure, nay 
to a great extent, to think for all, to care for all, to 
defend the weak, to forefend the strong ; and is there 
not now pervading the people of this country, even 
as a temper which has become characteristically 
British, a kindly sympathy in what affects the wel- 
fare of each race of the human family ; — such a 
feeling, at least, as has never belonged to any other 
people, in any age ? If many partake not at all of 
any such feeling, they are fewer than those who are 
alive to it in a good degree. 

With all the paths of the world now mapped be- 
fore us, and with means of communication which, 
for practical ends, condense the population of the 
earth, as if the thousand millions were crowded upon 
a ball of one third the diameter ; and with actual 
colonial possession of a large portion of the earth, 
and with moral possession, by high character and 
repute, of almost the whole of it ; and with all these 
uncalculated and untried means of uifluence now 
ripened, and presented afresh to our hands, who is it 
that can altogether control those mingling emotions 
of patriotism and of expansive benevolence, which 
become us, occup5dng as we do a position whence 



CHRISTIANITY. 195 

we may go forth to conquer the world, not for am- 
bition, not for wealth ; but for Truth and Peace ! 

And as we do stand in this position, and as we do, 
in so great a measure, entertain the feelings proper 
to it ; so is there a reciprocity of feeling widely dif- 
fused among the nations. — British political influence 
or national supremacy apart, the British feeling — 
its honour, its justice, and its humanity, are in fact 
understood in the remotest regions, and are trusted 
to by tribes whose names we have not yet learned 
to pronounce. The several designations by which 
English benevolence, in its various forms styles 
itself, have, as watch-words of hope, traversed the 
ocean, and have pervaded wildernesses ; and these 
titles of our organized philanthropy have already 
wakened the dull ear of half-civilized continents, and 
are reverberated from the hill-sides of the remotest 
barbarism. 

It is true that England is looked to, as the helper, 
guardian, guide, of the nations. And assuredly it is 
the Christianity of England which gives depth, 
substance, life, to her repute through the world, as 
the lover of justice, and the mover of good. 

But whatever England may yet do, or may fail 
to do, for the world ; it is to Christianity itself that 
we look as containing the only impelling motives 
of an eff*ective philanthropy. 

Neither the vastness of the field that is before 



196 ON SPIRITUAL 

US in this instance, nor the variety of the objects it 
embraces, should be allowed to confuse our appre- 
hensions of what is in itself very simple. In relation 
to any hope of amendment, or to the principles 
which should be relied upon in our endeavours to 
eJBfect it, the human family is but as — a single 
family ; the community of nations is but as — a 
numerous household ; or, that we may exclude 
objections, let it suffice to say, that whatever is 
true, and whatever would be practically advisable, 
if our intention were only to bring about a reform 
within some small and insulated settlement which 
had fallen into disorder, is also true, and would be 
in a practical sense wise to recommend, when it is 
the millions of this insulated world that we are 
thinking of. 

Human nature is one, whether we take it by fif- 
ties, or by milKons. Neither fifties nor millions, 
when fallen from a condition of social order and 
purity, will renovate themselves spontaneously. 
But whether it be a smaller or a larger community 
that is wisely cared for, and taught, and aided, the 
fruit of such labours will in due time appear. 

To simplify then, as much as possible our present 
course of inquiry, let us imagine that we have before 
us a colony of very limited extent — the two or three 
hundred families of a remote settlement ; and that, 
in visiting them, we find some of these families to 



CHRISTIANITY. 197 

have sunk, through neglect, and untoward events^ 
into the most abject state of destitution, ignorance, 
and vice ; while those less degraded, and who are 
enjoying the comforts of wealth, seem in a very- 
slight degree conscious of the wretchedness which 
surrounds them ; or at least are little disposed to 
attempt any methods of remedy. 

Now, putting out of view the political or legal 
provisions we might wish to introduce, for effecting 
the restoration of such a colony ; let us imagine a 
doctrine which, if we could but give it universal 
currency and credit, would at once operate as an 
invigorating medicine, administered to a languishing 
patient, in restoring vital energy to the social body. 
We find a large portion of this community fallen 
into a condition of wretchedness which renders 
them the objects of scorn, and of consequent ill- 
treatment, from others ; and w^iich breeds, in their 
own bosoms, a desponding apathy, and robs them 
of all self-respect and healthful activity. 

As the remedy of these evils, we preach a doc- 
trine which, without flattering self-love or inspiring 
insolence, confers upon every individual of this 
community — young and old, and however degraded, 
a hitherto unthought of importance ; and which 
challenges every soul as the rightful claimant by 
birth of certain high prerogatives. Let but this 
doctrine be received by all as undoubtedly founded 
17* 



198 ON SPIRITUAL 

in fact ; and then, although the inequahty of condi- 
tions is not merged, the rich and the powerful learn 
to respect their less fortunate brethren ; while these 
learn — what is indispensable to any reformation — to 
respect themselves. The promulgation of this 
doctrine introduces a new era, and will probably be 
of more efficacy in dispelling abject poverty and vice, 
than any rpolitical reforms that can be thought of. 



What we need then for the renovation of the 
human family is — the spread of that life-giving doc- 
trine which we find in the Scriptures, and which 
challenges the abject and the wretched, universally, 
and unexceptively, as the heirs of immortality, and 
as individually embraced in the intention of the 
Gospel. 

It follows from this doctrine that men, even the 
vilest, are no more to be contemned ; — for the Al- 
mighty does not contemn them: — -they are no longer 
to be forgotten, or despotically abused, or selfishly 
despaired of; for the Son of God has redeemed 
them. On the contrary ; they must now singly, 
and at whatever cost, be sought out, instructed, 
cared for, and succoured. 

We ask only that a doctrine such as this should 



CHRISTIANITY. 199 

be heartily embraced by Christian nations, and 
should be carried out wherever such nations are 
coming in contact with barbarous and semi-bar- 
barous races : must it not become a mighty energy, 
tending directly and certainly, to the renovation of 
the world ? 

With the eye steadily fixed upon some loath- 
somely abject or ferocious race, the veriest outcasts 
of the human family, let us suppose ourselves to 
listen to the proclamation of Heaven, issued in 
such terms as these — 

^^ God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." Or 
thus — ^' God our Saviour will have all men to be 
saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ;" 
he having ^' given himself a ransom for all, to be 
testified in due time." 

We might well be content to. leave our argument 
upon the ground of this single evangelic principle ; 
and, in affirming our position to be certain, that the 
Redeemer of the world has thus opened the path 
of life to every child of man, attempt no more. If 
this be true, the motive of benevolence measures 
every occasion ; nor can its obligations be dis- 
charged so long as any of our brethren are unblessed. 
If this be true, we virtually destroy those whom 



200 ON SPIRITUAL 

we do not visit and instruct. No bosom can admit 
this truth, and remain either abject or selfish. 

But let it be understood, that we are neither, at 
this moment, going about to prove the truth of the 
principle we name, nor endeavouring to show that 
this or that zealous endeavour, now on foot to 
spread the Gospel, must prosper. All we are say- 
ing is this — That the Gospel, thus understood, and 
if warmly embraced, as a motive of conduct, does 
contain a reason and an impulse, tending directly to 
carry forth Christianity, and all its present blessings, 
from land to land, until the human family is every- 
where happy ; and it does this by its solemn chal- 
lenge of every human being, as its own : how vile 
soever by actual condition, eyery human being is 
yet precious and honourable as redeemed. In virtue 
of this great truth, let us find man loathsome as he 
may be, we yet may not despise, nor abhor, nor 
neglect him. As a member of the family, he is 

indeed " dead in Adam :" but vet is he " alive in 

^ .J 

Christ." In respect of every child of man, lost as 
he may seem, and visibly despicable, the Redeemer, 
stretching forth his hand in caution, says, " Take 
heed that ye despise him not." 

Those therefore who give the greatest promi- 
nence to the doctrine of redemption, and who hold 
it and proclaim it in the freest manner, are the 
truest benefactors to their species. The doctrine 



CHRISTIANITY . 201 

which attaches infinite importance to human nature 
singly, and which declares llie condition of each to 
be yet hopeful, is the effective impulse of philan- 
tliropy. Let it only be believed, and the outcasts 
will be reclaimed. Can philosophy imagine a dog- 
ma more auspicious in its tendency than this which 
confers the highest, and let us grant it, a fearful 
dignity upon every human being, as immortal, and 
as responsible ; and which opens to him, without a 
plea of exception, the brightest hopes ? It must be 
a doctrine such as this, if there be any, that will at 
once recover him from degradation, and defend him 
from oppression. 

Instead of imagining, or of toaching any snrh 
benign doctrine as this, the mood of philosophy 
has always been contemptuous toward the degraded 
races of mankind. Or whatever pliilanthropy it 
may have professed, it has set on foot no endea- 
vours to recover the lost. Too often has it con- 
nived at the atrocities of which these have been the 
victims. 

The Christian's axiom — That men are individu- 
ally to be respected, and to be cared for, and that 
human life and well-being must not be trifled with, 
is not the maxim of the Despot, whose palace is un- 
dermined with dungeons ; nor of the founder of 
empire and the conqueror of kingdoms, who rears 
pyramids of human skulls. It is not the maxim of 



202 ONSPIRITUAL 

the rapacious trafficker, who amasses mountains of 
gold by dealing in a drug that poisons the body and 
soul of millions. Nor is the Christian doctrine, on 
this head, in any favour with the lovers of pleasure, 
or with cold sensualists, who never ask at what cost 
of human misery their gratifications may have been 
provided. All these parties love to think of men as 
despicable singly, and despicable in the mass ; and, 
wdiether to be counted by tens, or by millions, as 
nothing better than the dust in the balance, when 
weighed against the desires of pride, or the lust of 
powxr, or of animal indulgence. 

Not so the Gospel ; and if we only assume it to 
he. bp.lipvp.cl as true, by any one who, at tlie impulse 
of selfish passions, may. be prompted to trample 
upon the well-being or comfort of his fellows, he 
hears that awful warning, directed to himself — ^' It 
were better for a man that a mill-stone were hanged 
about his neck, and he cast into the depths of the 
sea — it w^ere better for a man never to have been 
born, than that he should despise or offend one of 
the least of those for whom Christ died." This 
may not indeed stay the oppressor in his course ; 
but it tends to do so ; and it will, if opinion around 
him be free, and Christian-like. 

Inasmuch as contempt for himself is at once the 
parent and the offspring of misery to the individual, 
so is contempt for others the prompter of all crimes. 



CHRISTIANITY. 203 

But convey into the heart of the wretched this Gos- 
pel truth, which shows him his own rehgious dig- 
nity, and he starts from the earth ; or lodge it in 
the conscience of the oppressor, and he is staggered 
in the execution of his purpose. 

But we may easily make proof of the tendency and 
efficacy of our principle, by applying it to instances 
always near at hand. Governed by an undoubting 
belief of what Christianity affirms concerning every 
human being, let us penetrate some of those ca- 
verns of woe which undermine (literally and meta- 
phorically undermine) our great towns. And, when 
pleasure and business have had their dues, let us 
enter the home — home, alas ! can it be called ? — of 
our brother, w^iom hitherto we have not thought of 
as such. Let us learn from his own lips, what he, 
and his, endure from day to day ; and have endured 
through the round of our smiling years. And let 
us listen, either while he recounts his dull variety 
of present miseries, or while he tells of the utter 
neglect of his infancy, of the destitution, and the 
thoughtless crimes of his childhood, of the infamy 
of his youth, of the wild desperation and enormity 
of his manhood ; and now of the sullen anguish of 
his last years of utter wretchedness. And yet this 
our brother, whom we find as a broken vessel, cast 
forth and abhorred, was formed like ourselves, capa- 
ble of enjoyment, which he has never tasted but as 



204 ONSPIRITUAL 

poison ; and capable of virtue too, of which he has 
known nothing but such a rumour as remorse may 
have w^hispered in his tortured ear. It is true that 
even he was formed for happiness, and for virtue ; 
and — if the Gospel be true, he is still capable of 
both ; and even now might his ear be wakened by 
the alarms of mercy ; and even now might he hear 
the voice that speaks from heaven — '' Arise thou 
that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee life." Even 
might this, our abject brother be regained, and be 
taught to set out in our company on the road to 
Heaven. If the Gospel be true, all this is true ; 
and moreover, if ive believe it to be true, it will 
impel us thus to seek him that was lost, and to 
soothe his withered soul with the sounds of grace 
which ourselves have listened to. 

Whether true or not, is not now our question ; but 
we affirm that, if thoroughly believed to be true — 
this evangelic principle, which confers dignity upon 
the meanest of the human race, and opens hope be- 
fore the most sunken eye, does include a substan- 
tial, efficacious means, directly and powerfully tend- 
ing to raise the fallen, and to diffuse happiness. 

The same religious regard to the welfare of who- 
ever shares with us the hopes of immortality, and 
which impels the missionary to follow the track of 
savage hordes, and prompts labours of charity 
nearer home, yet hardly less arduous — this feeling, 



CHRISTIANITY. 205 

if brought into the family circle, imparts a new and 
more serious conviction of duty to the course we 
pursue in promoting the highest good of our chil- 
dren ; for if it be reasonable to send missionaries to 
the opposite hemisphere, at so great cost and risk, 
how unreasonable to be remiss in training those 
most dear to us, in " the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord !" And the same principle forbids our 
regarding our servants as the mere instruments of 
our convenience ; nor, if we admit it, shall we 
dare to compromise the religious welfare of any 
whom we employ, from motives of personal advan- 
tage or comfort. 

Let it now be granted us that this axiom, which 
puts the seal of God upon the forehead of every 
human being, does most convincingly prove the 
Gospel itself to be from Heaven. Is it not herein, 
a clear expression of infinite goodness ? Many 
who have rejected the authority of the Scriptures 
have yet been ready to acknowledge the benign 
tendency of the ethical system they teach ; but few 
have discerned that still more striking evidence of 
its divine origin which arises from a consideration 
of the characteristic article we have here adverted 
to. Christ commands us *' to love our enemies ;" 
but more than this, and of weightier import is the 
principle which leads the Christian to remember 
that even his most inveterate enemy may, should 
18 



206 ON SPIRITUAL 

God grant him repentance, become his companion 
through a happy immortahty. The mere rule of 
love, or the verbal precept is almost lost in the 
depth of the motive which such a belief inspires. 
Whoever has acquired the habit of thinking of those 
around him, individually, as the heirs of immor- 
tality, has little more to learn in that department of 
morals w^hich relates to our duty toward our neigh- 
bour. 



II 



If we are thus taught to entertain a religious 
reverence in regard to the welfare of every member 
of the human family, it remains to ask. What the 
quality of those emotions is with which, as Chris- 
tians, we should labour to promote that welfare ? 

We reply that these emotions, and in a degree 
far surpassing any others, are profound and intense ; 
and they are so in proportion to the firmness of our 
confidence in the reality of the Gospel itself — or, in 
other words, to our personal piety. 

Much and habitual meditation on the vast theme 
of our own immortahty, cannot but bring with it a 
sohcitude, even painfully intense, for the spiritual 
welfare of others. And as is the personal religious 
feeling, so is the relative feeling which expresses 
itself in Christian zeal. The waste places of the 



CHRISTIANITY. 207 

world will not be made to blossom, nor will the 
mephitic dens of superstition ever be fearlessl 
entered, nor the horrors of savage life encountered, 
merely because it is abstractedly right that such 
perils should be met, and such labours undergone. 
But both the danger and the toil are contemned, 
when Christian men, who are happily conscious of 
the divine truth and power of the Gospel, think of 
their fellow-men as ignorant of it. It is then that 
benevolent zeal burns with a steady flame, when 
evangehsts, with the animation of a personal experi- 
ence of the truth, go forth saying, ^* We have seen 
and do testify, that the Father sent the Son to be 
the Savioiu: of the world !" 

There is however a peculiarity attaching to the 
emotions of Christian benevolence, which claims to 
be noticed. These feelings seem, in truth, to in- 
volve a paradox, which we should not leave unex- 
plained. 

It might have been thought that a religion the 
very purport of which is to teach the comparative 
insignificance of the interests of the present tran- 
sient life, would almost inevitably induce, so far as 
it takes effect, an apathy and indifference toward 
them ; and especially so, when it is the temporal 
welfare of others, not of ourselves that is thought 
of. How natural to suppose that the adherents of 
such a religion would be distinguished from other 



208 ON SPIRITUAL 

men by their callous disregard of the brief suffer- 
ings and wants of those around them ! Why 
should we bestow our pity upon the sorrows of an 
hour, or employ our hands in relieving necessities 
which end so early ? Much less should we sacri- 
fice our personal rehgious enjoyments by labours 
of this kind ; or care for the bodily comfort of 
others, when spiritual contemplation might fully 
engage us. 

In truth, no such cold reasonings of spiritual 
selfishness have ever been the characteristics of 
genuine Christian piety. The very contrary is 
true. This is a fact which needs not to be proved. 
— The vast difference between the ancient civihzed 
world, and the modern, turns very much upon it ; 
and in comparing the two states of society, nothing 
is more remarkable than the incalculably greater 
extent of that regard which is paid to the bodily 
sufferings and wants of men in modern, than was 
paid in ancient times ; and this difference is a direct 
consequence of the influence of Christian motives. 
It is the believers in a life hereafter who have done 
almost all that has ever been attempted for assuag- 
ing the sorrows, and for enhancing the comforts of 
men in respect of the life now passing. 

The Christian, like his Master, not only has a 
larger, and a more long-sighted compassion than 
other men ; but a more sensitive compassion also — 



CHRISTIANITY. 209 

a pity more quick and prompt — a pity of nicer tact, 
and a more generous and gentle sympathy, employ- 
ing itself, not merely upon those evils which are 
ominous of remote ruin ; but upon those which 
must become extinct in the grave. 

What are the facts which every day exemplify 
these assertions ? The very persons among us who 
think with mournful alarm of the spiritual destitu- 
tion of the heathen world — these persons are those 
who witness, with the most sensitive indignation, the 
bodily miseries of oppressed races. The very same 
hearts which beat with the hope of bringing pagan 
nations to the knowledge of salvation, these same 
bosoms thrill with delight while .listening to the 
traveller, who describes the decent happiness of the 
once ferocious savage, and the petty comforts and 
embellishments of his home ! In explanation of 
these facts it is obvious to point to the check which 
is given to selfishness by the Christian code ; and 
to notice the general warmth which is diffused 
through the moral faculties by the devout affec- 
tions. But beyond this, we are to remember that 
Christian piety very much promotes, and indeed 
consists in, the habit of connecting the incidents 
of the present life, from hour to hour, with the 
w^ell-being of the life to come ; and involves a 
constant recollection of the moral bearing of the 
present, upon the future. This habit having 
18* 



210 ON SPIRITUAL 

been formed — a sort of pulsation is maintained — a 
vital throb, beating forward, every moment, from 
time into eternity. But then there is a return in 
this flow — it is a circulation of life ; and thus it is 
that eternity sends back upon the interests of time 
an undefined, yet weighty sense of its own powers 
— communicating a serious intensity, and imparting 
a value, even to the good or ill of an hour. What- 
ever therefore, belonging to this life, which is not in 
itself frivolous, or sensual, or sordid — and no human 
suffering is frivolous, no gentle affection of the 
heart indifferent — ^whatever is not so, instead of its 
e:5^citing less sympathy through its relationship to a 
future life, excites so much the more. The mind, 
fully penetrated by the deeply-working affections 
which are its preparation for taking part in the feli- 
city of heaven, and finding them to be pent up with- 
in the narrow limits of earth, applies them with — 
might we say it — a disproportionate spring and 
force to whatever around it is of a quality naturally 
to excite them. 

The more piety, therefore, the more compassion ; 
and the quick sympathies of a Christian heart apply 
themselves, in easy alternation, now to the spirtual, 
and now to the temporal necessities of men ; and 
wath a oneness of force, or momentum, and with 
almost the same earnestness of zeal, administer 
relief, either to the body or to the soul. 



CHRISTIANITY. 211 

There is a depth of meaning in this fact, con- 
sidered in connection with the movements now in 
progress, for evangehzing barbarous and half-civil- 
ized races. We invite attention to it from any who, 
although they may not choose to class themselves 
with " the religious," would not wish to be thought 
indifferent to the happiness of their fellows. 

Why such persons should not aid Christian mis- 
sions, on the obvious ground that Christianity car- 
ries the blessino-s of civilization aloncr with it — does 

o o 

not appear. Let us however for a moment admit 
the plea which such might advance — '' That these 
evangelizing projects are fanatical in principle, and 
are injudiciously managed ; and are therefore very 
likely to come to a speedy termination." Neverthe- 
less if it were so, it is certain that, under this very 
agency those regions are being explored where the 
most horrid usages prevail, by men whose very 
characteristic it is (whether we think them fanatics 
or not) to feel more sensitively than others, and 
much more so than traders or philosophical travel- 
lers ever do, the miseries and oppressions which 
they there witness. From whom is it that we have 
derived, during the last thirty years, a competent 
and specific knowledge of the vilifying influence of 
the superstitions of India, and of the foul and cruel 
practices which attach to them ? Is it not mainly 
from Christian missionaries ? Even then if it were 



212 ON SPIRITUAL 

granted that the overwrought sensibiUty of some of 
these reporters has exaggerated the descriptions 
they have sent home, yet, taken in the mass, such 
narratives are authentic, and they remain uncontra- 
dicted by those from whom we should never have 
received any such accounts. It is none but men 
whose feehngs have been rendered keen by the re- 
Hgious affections, that could collect these reports : 
irreligious men, though they have eyes to see, do 
not see, though they have ears to hear, do not hear, 
these things ; nor have they hearts seriously to bo 
affected by the miseries of their fellows. 

It should therefore be regarded as a circumstance 
of very peculiar importance — we mean it should so 
be regarded by all who would be numbered among 
philanthropists and philosophers, that at this mo- 
ment, the world is everywhere set about, or senti- 
nelled with warm-hearted men, and with tender- 
spirited women too, whose personal benevolent dis- 
positions have impelled them to undertake such a 
part ; and who are always observing and reporting 
whatever is cruel, ferocious, impure, and wretched, 
in those regions where, through a long course of 
ages, no check w^hatever has restrained the worst 
passions of human nature. But at length these 
^' dark places of the earth" — full as they are of '' the 
habitations of cruelty," are opened to the inspection 
of men governed by happier dispositions. We ask 



CHRISTIANITY. 213 

then — and we invite a reply to the question — Is not 
this fact of the mere inspection of such regions, by 
such persons, a great point gained for humanity? 
and have not the reports w^hich are thus continually 
furnished, and presented to the civihzed world, a 
direct tendency to bring to bear upon the evils so 
reported, whatever reliefs or remedies it may be 
possible to administer to them ? Where then are 
the philanthropists who are backward to hail this 
modern system of Christian visitation, or to aid in 
sustaining it ? 

At the present moment, and with the hearty con- 
currence of philosophers, scientific establishments 
are formed in several latitudes, and in both hemis- 
pheres, for noting and recording the sjmchronous 
pulsations of the magnetic fluid. A worthy engage- 
ment we grant. But after all, if what concerns the 
happiness of man be an end not unworthy of serious 
regard, do we do well to forget the labours and per- 
ils of those who, during the past forty years, have 
been noting and reporting (what, since the world 
has been peopled, none have thus reported) the ex- 
treme degradations of the human family ? 

The thus accumulated knowledge of the actual 
condition of the several races of mankind, consti- 
tutes a fund of benevolent excitement, acting always 
upon sensitive Christian hearts ; and so tending to 
recruit the ranks of evangelic labour. The purely 



214 ON SPIRITUAL 

religious desire '' to convert the heathen/^ and the 
conviction of duty in this behalf, may be regarded 
as a constant force, acting upon Christian minds in 
an equitable manner ; but the vivid impression of 
present miseries to be relieved, acts intensely upon 
the class of minds best adapted to the arduous work 
of breaking up the barbarism of untutored nations. 
Thus it is that Christian compassion for bodily 
sufferings, and a Christian zeal for the propagation 
of Truth, tend in conjunction to diffuse every spe- 
cies of good. 

Let it now be imagined that a human eye were 
suddenly endowed w^ith a microscopic power, 
reaching far and wide, and embracing at once earth 
and sky — and the myriads of every inch, and the 
organs and faculties of each living thing, in all. 
Nothing in such a prospect would be exaggeration : 
nothing more than mere truth would be presented, 
even by so multiform and vast a revelation of the 
organized and conscious world ; and, if there were 
any inference properly arising from such a spec- 
tacle, and bearing upon our personal conduct, with 
what force would it come home to us ? 

What then are Christian sympathies, and what 
are the quick sensibilities, and the far-extending 
anticipations of a Christian heart ; — and what is 
this habit of feeling as to things present, with a 
force which borrows impulse from the weight of 



CHRIS TI ANI T Y. 215 

eternity, what are these habits and sensibiUties, as 
apphed to the wide compass of the moral world, 
but a sort of microscopic power, reveaUng, at a 
glance, whatever that circle embraces — both present 
and future ? All that may be suffered, and all that 
might be enjoyed, by our brethren of the human 
family, opens itself to our consciousness, and if our 
personal agency may be thought to stand in any 
manner related to this vast range of good or ill, the 
motives of benevolence admit all the depth and 
intensity which our feeble nature can at all sustain. 
It is not to be supposed that all minds, or that 
many, could surrender themselves to sensibilities 
such as these : — but some do in fact thus feel ; and 
some do thus think of what surrounds them ; and 
although they can by no means so govern the emo- 
tions of which they are conscious as to be able to 
give them intelligible expression ; yet they do, if 
well constituted, and if ruled by Christian maxims, 
so resolve, and so act as to draw many in their train, 
and to lead forth bands of Christian philanthropy.' 
In every age there have been a few thus to feel ; 
and in an age like the present, which favours the 
active employment of these deep energies of the 
soul, men, so moulded, who otherwise might either 
have smothered their emotions, or have misdirected 
them toward some purpose of fanaticism, will go 



216 ON SPIRITUAL 

forth to carry blessings, wherever man is yet igno- 
rant and unhappy. 



III. 



We have seen that Christianity rescues every 
member of the human family, singly, from con- 
tempt, oppression, and wretchedness, by attaching 
to each an infinite importance, as responsible, and 
immortal, and as entitled to the benefits of redemp- 
tion. We have seen moreover that, to give practical 
eifect to this principle, the Gospel generates senti- 
ments of humanity and compassion, peculiarly 
vivid, whether excited by the bodily sufferings, or 
the spiritual destitution of our fellows. But these 
two distinctions of the religion of Christ are con- 
nected with 

A Law of Diffusion ; 

and we must, in this instance, use the word law in 
both its customary senses, as intending — a statute^ 
or sanctioned command ; and an impulse, or force, 
or an established mode of action ; as when we speak 
of the laws of nature. 

Our religion must be carried out into all the world ; 
for its Author has formally and solemnly enjoined 
his ministers so to promulgate it ; and it loould be 



CHRISTIANITY. 217 

thus propagated ; because those in whose bosoms it 
resides with power, feel impelled to communicate 
the happiness they derive from it. 

The great fact, several times adverted to in the 
course of these Lectures, of the slow development 
of the powers of Christianity, is most signally 
illustrated in the instance of this, its Law and Im- 
pulse of Diffusion. Both took full effect in the 
apostolic era ; and within a century from the ascen- 
sion of Christ, his doctrine had been carried, with 
effect, throughout the area of the Roman world ; and 
even far beyond it. But from the time when nefa- 
rious means were resorted to for grasping a still- 
pagan population within the arms of the church, by 
bringing Christianity itself to the nearest resem- 
blance possible, to the ancient polytheism — from that 
time onward, little or nothing deserving to be named 
as an extension of the Gospel, took place during a 
long series of ages. Nations were varnished with 
Christian rites — but were not evangelized. 

And most remarkable is the continued torpor of 
this expansive force during the great awakening 
season of the Reformation. Other principles were 
then to be developed ; — -this w^as to wait its hour. 
But its hour has come ; and England is the theatre 
of its expansion. 

Those who can free themselves from the thrall of 
irreligious prejudices (and no prejudices are more 
19 



218 ON SPIRITUAL 

firm in their texture, or more narrow) and who are 
accustomed to read the future in the past, will not 
find it easy to resist the belief that a Christianizing 
of the world is to be the consequence of that singular 
conjuncture of circumstances which makes this 
country, at the same moment, the centre of colo- 
nization, and the centre of the long inert, but now 
active Law of evangelical diffusion. 

It is but incidentally that the evangelizing zeal of 
these times has sprung out of the commercial and 
colonial greatness of England. There has indeed 
been a connexion of causes, running from the one 
into the other ; but the main causes have had an 
altogether independent origin. 

We must be blind to the most conspicuous facts, 
if we fail to observe so remarkable a combination 
of tendencies as that to which we now advert. — 

After sixteen or seventeen hundred years of an 
abeyance of the first law of the Christian code, and 
of the lethargy of its diffusive impulse, that law has 
at length fixed itself in all consciences, and the im- 
pulse has affected all hearts ; and this has happened 
among the most expansive and enterprising of civil- 
ized communities, and at a moment when, in various 
modes, the British stock, name, language, literature, 
feeling, habits, institutions, are taking possession of 
every unclaimed area upon the surface of the earth. 
And it should be observed that pure Christianity, as 



CHRISTIANITY. 219 

connected with this national outspread, is, in a very 
remarkable manner, justifying its characteristic as 
the '^salt of the earth" — or true conservative prin- 
ciple of the social system, the operation of which, 
is, by a silent but efficacious process, tending to 
secure the highest benefits which the philanthropist 
tan desire. Christianity, felt to be indispensable to 
what may be called — colonial health, and to the 
actual preservation of settlements existing under 
precarious circumstances, will be cherished and 
sustained, wherever the habits of the settlers are of 
the kind most likely to render a colony permanently 
prosperous ; while simultaneous settlements, not 
governed by Christian principles, and within which 
all the vices of old civilization collapse with the 
ferocities of savage life, wall work their own ruin ; 
for this mixture of the worst elements of the two 
forms of society, cannot but be self-destructive. 
Such settlements must run their course — take their 
fate — and always pressing as they do toward dis- 
order, dispersion, decay, must ere long become 
extinct. Colonies which, by renouncing the Gospel 
and contemning its forms, abandon themselves to 
the miasmas of those swamps, whereinto the old 
world drains itself, shall die out ; leaving the dese- 
crated wilderness to enjoy its sabbaths, until a 
company fearing God, comes to redeem the desola- 
tion which atheism has left as her most significant 



220 ON SPIRITUAL 

monument. Thus by what may be regarded as a 
natural process of colonial purification, and espe- 
cially if aided, as it should be, by the paternal 
discretion and Christian-like feeling of the govern- 
ment of a Christian country, the wastes of the earth 
must gradually be Christianized ; until, the world 
itself having become at once Christian cind English, 
the very names shall almost be convertible. Can 
wx then refrain our happy and hopeful feelings as 
Christians, as patriots and as philanthropists, at a 
moment when Britain sits at home, like a watchful 
mother of a rising world ; at a time when, by her 
direct, or by her moral influence, she keeps in awe 
many whom she does not rule, and when the sceptre 
of England has become a symbol of safety, and a 
pledge of justice to many nations ; and when the 
hand that holds that sceptre is screening from 
wrons: the hut and hearth of savage tribes, on both 
sides the equator ; at such a time, how does every 
motive, secular and religious, combine to enhance 
the earnestness of the desire, that a bright triumph of 
Spiritual Christianity at home— its purification from 
ancient corruptions — its difiiision among the neg- 
lected heathen of our great towns, and not less, its 
taking anew a firm hold of the convictions of the 
upper and educated classes — that by all these means, 
the Gospel — the only hope of man, may, even in 
our times, plant its banner of love on every shore ; 



CHRISTIANITY. 221 

— and moreover that, by the means of England, 
and through her influence, the " muUitude of the 
islands" may rejoice, and howling wildernesses be 
reclaimed, until the old civilized world, hemmed in 
on all sides by a new and better social order, shall 
itself be reclaimed and regenerated ! 

Far are we from speaking of such events in the 
language of confident anticipation. All we affirm 
is. That the Gospel of Christ tends to bring them 
about ; and that it will do so, should its influence in 
this country be much extended and refreshed. 



IV. 



We have to name a fourth^ and a most important 
distinction of Spiritual Christianity, fitting it to be 
regarded as the true and only eff'ective instrument 
of universal good to the human family. In naming 
what we have now in view, we must ask that candid 
attention, which may exclude the probability of a 
misunderstanding of our real meaning. 

We afl&rm that Spiritual Christianity is peculiarly 
adapted to the purpose of diffusing truth and virtue 
through the world, because, as a spiritual system^ 
It is always superior to every visible institu- 
tion. Such institutions, subject as they are to the 
control of man, and liable therefore always to perver- 
19* 



222 ON SPIRITUAL 

sion and overthrow, must often obstruct, or utterly 
forbid the progress of the Gospel, if it were inextri- 
cably connected with them ; or unless it were held 
fo be separable from them, and of far higher import- 
ance than any, even the best of them. What then 
is our principle on this ground ? — assuredly not that 
such institutions, whether more or less strictly eccle- 
siastical, are of little importance ; or that they may 
be safely contemned, or hastily and recklessly over- 
thrown, or dismantled, or despoiled. Certainly we 
have no such meaning as this. Assuredly we hold 
no such loose doctrine as this. On the contrary, if 
the present were a fit occasion on which to express 
our opinion on questions of ecclesiastical polity, we 
might perhaps carry our doctrine much further than 
would be likely to meet the concurrence of many 
here present. We may therefore think ourselves 
free from any fair imputation of laxity of belief in 
regard to the high importance of existing religious 
institutions. 

But surely such institutions, at the best, are only 
means to an end ; .and the end must be greater than 
the means, always. Such institutions moreover, 
inasmuch as they have a local limitation, and are 
more or less intimately interwoven with whatever 
belongs to the civil and social existence of the peo- 
ple among whom they are found, and as they are 
administered, from year to year, by men — not in- 



CHRISTIANITY, 223 

spired, they are liable lo sway, on this side and on 
that ; and do in fact partake of the dangerous heav- 
ings by which all human affairs are so often brought 
into jeopardy. It cannot therefore be wise to put 
our Christianity, ivithout reserve, on board even the 
fairest and best navigated ecclesiastical institution 
that has ever braved the storms. 

What are the lessons w^hich history teaches us on 
this point ? What has come of the experiment to 
entrust a visible universal church with the spiritual 
welfare of the human race ? How has the church 
of Rome acquitted herself of this usurped trust ? — 
The foulest corruptions, the most extraordinary blas- 
phemies, the most atrocious crimes, and the darkest 
errors, doctrinal and moral, and all perpetuated 
through a long course of ages, these have been the 
fruits of the theory which would lodge an irrespon- 
sible and absolute power over Christianity with 
fallible man. 

Christianity w^e must believe to be greater, and 
more permanent, and of wider extent, than any means 
that can be devised for maintaining, or for diffusing 
it. And in proportion as the Gospel is understood, 
in its purity and in its power — in proportion as it is 
felt to be a spiritual religion, this independence of 
whatever is local and visible will the more appear ; 
not indeed to the disparagement of visible institu- 



224 ON SPIRITUAL 

tions ; but to the higher glory of the spiritual 
reahty. 

The warmest supporters of those associations for 
the propagation of rehgious truth, which distinguish 
our times, are not so fond as to imagine that the 
Gospel is all risked in their bark ; or that the decay 
or dispersion of these societies, how much soever to 
be lamented, would seal its fate in the world ! 

Christianity, which has survived all empires, and 
all forms of opinion, and all human institutions, not 
only will survive all, but is at every moment supe- 
rior to all, and must be allowed to take its high 
course, whether these institutions move with it, or 
are broken on their way. 

We must therefore, in connexion with this im- 
portant topic, once again, and finally, allude to those 
lately revived opinions to which we have several 
times adverted, as being peculiarly opposed to the 
progress of spiritual — of genuine Christianity. 

It seems scarcely to need proof, that any system 
of opinions, the purport and tendency of which is to 
give an unusual prominence, and a paramount im- 
portance to visible institutions, and especially as his- 
torically transmitted and geographically defined, and 
which, with a severe consistency, denies the very 
name of Christian to whatever may be found beyond 
its pale, or may not acknowledge its jurisdiction, 
that such a system, so far as it takes effect, stands 



CHRISTIANITY. 225 

opposed to whatever is the most auspicious in the 
present age ; and if permitted to work its will, must 
turn back the current of human affairs — a thousand 
years, and would confine the blessings of the Gospel 
within limits narrower than those of ancient Juda- 
ism. These exclusive opinions, so fondly embraced 
by many, are indeed — a '' discipline of the secret," 
likely enough to bury the Gospel in a cloister, along 
with the last hopes of happiness for mnnl^ind. 

Whoever does not admit the independence of 
Christianity, as to the visible means of its mainte- 
nance, and its superiority to all such means, reduces 
himself to the sad necessity of rejecting, even the 
most convincing evidence which may attest the tri- 
umphs of the Gospel under forms w^hich he does not 
allow to be legitimate. The consequence must be, 
not indeed that such successes of '' unauthentic zeal" 
are stayed in their course till he approves them ; — 
but that he himself is driven further and further from 
whatever is substantial, whatever is benign, what- 
ever is reasonable in the Cliristian system, until he 
finds a gloomy home, not in a church — but in a 
sepulchre. 

No position can be imagined more undesirable, 
or indeed fearful, than will be that occupied by 
very many, should pure Christianity rapidly spread 
in the heathen world, under what they are pleased 
to call *' irregular ministrations." Such persons, ren- 



226 ON SPIRITUAL 

dered only so much the more obdurate by the 
copious evidence that is reaching them of the 
falseness of their theory, would be driven, not im- 
probably, in desperation, to take part with the open 
enemies of all truth. 

Christians better taught, are prepared to hail with 
unfeigned, and with unmixed pleasure, every in- 
stance, let it be found where it may, in which the 
lives and tempers of men are reformed on the 
Christian model ; and, in perfect consistency with 
their principles, they will always think it their duty 
and privilege to take part in any endeavours that 
are sincerely and prudently instituted for imparting 
to the ignorant the blessings of truth. 

How many perplexities are evaded by a hearty 
recognition of our axiom — That the Gospel is 
always more than the instrumentalities it employs ! 
How much peace of conscience is connected with 
a steady adherence to the belief. That the rescue of 
immortal souls from sin and misery is a work which, 
when effected by Sovereign Mercy, we never need 
scruple to rejoice in ! 

It cannot well be doubted that the purest forms 
of Christianity, whatever they are, will on the 
whole, be the most efficacious in extending it ; if 
therefore we suppose all true Christians to be gov- 
erned by the simple rule of aiding to promote the 
Gospel, under whatsoever form they see it to be ad- 



CHRISTIANITY. 227 

vancing the most auspiciously — then it must hap- 
pen that — The purest form of Christianity will, in 
the end, draw around itself all, or the greater num- 
ber of sincere Christians ; and so by this simple 
process, the much desired church unity would be 
brought about, not by polemical, but by evangelical 
triumphs. 



We come then to mention the Jifth of those hap- 
py distinctions of Spiritual Christianity which 
w^arrant a reasonable hope of its diffusion, with 
all the blessings that attend it, throughout the 
earth. — 

Spiritual Christianity offers a ground of cordial 
combination, for all purposes of religious benevo- 
lence, among its true adherents. 

We have here to do with one of those frequent 
instances in which a rule that, in theory, may seem 
beset with difficulties, ceases to be so, w^hen honest- 
ly reduced to practice. While men of cold hearts 
and narrow understandings are propounding inter- 
minable questions, as to the possibility of giving 
contentment to the exquisite delicacy of their ^' con- 
sciencies," when they are required to aid and assist 
in some good work — Christian men, whose con- 
sciences are informed by the instincts of love, find 



228 ON SPIRITUAL 

abundant comfort and pleasure in joining hands 
with their brethren, whenever any labours of cha- 
rity demand their co-operation. 

We do not hold ourselves bound to attempt a 
reply to the question of sanctimonious selfishness — 
'^ Who is my brother ^ who is my neighbour ?" For 
the most exact and elaborate answer must fail to 
supply what is really wanting in the querist — the 
heart of a Christian ; and as to those in whose 
bosoms such a heart beats, they never in fact put 
any such question. 

In giving effect to the Christian principle of co- 
operation in works of charity, two conditions are 
always supposed : — thej^?-^^ is, that those who are 
thus summoned to '^ strive together" for promoting 
the welfare of their fellow-men are so far animated 
by Christian motives, and are so far governed by 
Christian principles, as to satisfy their brethren as 
to their claim to be treated with cordial affection. 
Verbal specifications of belief, on secondarj?- points, 
are superseded by the confidence which a truly 
Christian deportment inspires. Nothing can be 
more frigid, or impertinent, or arrogant, than the 
question — '^ Can I join hands with — Christ's true 
disciples, differing from me in points of belief?" 

The second condition of Christian combinations 
for promoting benevolent designs, is — a genuine 
warmth of the benevolent affections, in those who so 



CHRISTIANITY. 229 

combine. We are not afraid to affirm it as a gen- 
eral truth that, where good men are seen withdraw- 
ing from this, that, and the other labours of love, on 
the plea of conscientious scruples, the moral nature 
w^ith them will be found to be of small dimensions, 
or of slender proportions. If the moral tempera- 
ment be vigorous, and the understanding not infirm, 
great motives will overrule inferior motives, and the 
impulses of benevolence will, with an irresistible 
momentum, break through those snares for the con- 
science which the Adversary, when driven to em- 
ploy his last expedients, spreads in the way of 
Christian enterprises. 

Hitherto, although frequently alluding to them, 
we have not distinctly spoken of those enterprises 
of Christian zeal and benevolence which stand forth 
as so remarkable a feature of the moral history of 
the present age, and which are its glory. We are 
compromised with none of these institutions ; — we 
are pledged to none, as apologists ; and yet are 
bound to all as Christians. None commands our 
servile or partizan-like support ; — each commands 
our cordial good wishes, and the utmost aid we 
could give. 

These pious and charitable associations are, col- 
lectively, the expression of a widely-diffused, and 
Christian-like benevolence, which is indeed the praise 
of Britain, and the admiration of the world ; and 
20 



230 ON SPIRITUAL 

which shall be the theme of posterity. Compared 
with, any enterprises which heretofore have com- 
bined the hearts and energies of a people, is not the 
missionary enterprise noble and generous in its 
conception — heaven-like in its object and temper — 
unblamable in the means it adopts, and most benign 
so far as it prospers, in its actual results 1 

And why has it not prospered more ? Many 
reasons should be assigned in reply ; but we are 
here content to say, That, midoubtedly, and not 
forgetting our dependence upon the divine aid, it 
would so prosper if it commanded, to a greater 
extent, and in proportion to its indisputable merits, 
the resources, the influence, the intelHgent co-opera- 
tion of the upper and educated classes of England. 

The laborious endeavours now making, at so 
many points, to diffuse the blessings of the Gospel, 
and with them the blessings of social order, peace, 
and wealth through the world — these endeavours, 
on every principle of mere reason, of benevolence, 
and of Christian feeling, deserve — nay, demand, 
far more support than they actually receive from the 
noble, and the learned — from those whose position 
in society, or whose accomplishments and talents, 
would render their cordial co-operation incalculably 
important. 

What, if some of these societies may have erred ? 
What if we relish not their style, or distaste their 



CHRISTIANITY. 231 

proceedings, or question some of their averments ? 
We must not look at any human agencies in so 
sickly a manner, as would lead us to abandon what 
is great and good, on the plea of blemishes from 
which nothing human is exempt. Posterity, we 
may be sure, will not thus look at the missionary 
zeal of the nineteenth century ; but will rather re- 
gard the broad intention, and the prominent pur- 
port of these labours of love. If these labours 
fail of their desired success, yet the facts of such 
an endeavour having been made, will not be blotted 
from the page of history ; and let us think of it as 
certain, that those who shall read that page, will 
deal, not very gently, with any by whose immediate 
faplt so bright a hope of renovation for the world, 
was suffered to expire. But on the contrary, if 
this endeavour succeed, and if, as we firmly believe, 
the present evangelic labours of this country are as 
the dawn of day in the world's history — if indeed 
we are now standing, as on the very confines of 
light and darkness — if long centuries of moral de- 
solation are to be followed by far longer eras of 
truth, virtue, peace, let us take care that we our- 
selves be not fixed upon those confines, as ^' pillars 
of salt" — the monuments of unbelief and selfish 
infatuation ! 

There is one aspect of the evangelizing associa- 
tions now referred to, which does not seem to have 



232 ON SPIRITUAL 

attracted the attention it deserves ; and which, as 
we venture to affirm, might not improperly be seri- 
ously considered at the present moment by the 
upper and educated classes. We refer to the re- 
flex influence of these combinations upon the classes 
to which mainly they owe their support, and by 
which they are governed. 

The great extent and depth of this reflected in- 
fluence can be estimated only by those (and but im- 
perfectly even by such) whose position in society, 
and whose habits have enabled them, at leisure, to 
become acquainted with the sentiments and intel- 
lectual condition of the masses from which Mis- 
sionary Societies draw four-fifths of their revenues. 
These contributors, ranging from the artisan class, 
and upward toward the higher grades, and including 
a fair proportion of the moderate opulence and 
average intelligence of the country, are doing for 
themselves^ full as much, in every sense, as they are 
doing for the heathen world ; — and we say this 
without intending any disparagement of the mis- 
sionary work abroad. 

We could not easily over-rate the extent or im- 
portance of that moral and intellectual advancement 
which, in the course of the last thirty or forty years, 
has resulted directly from the diffusion of the mis- 
sionary spirit in England. It has carried with it, 
and has conveyed to many thousands of the middle 



CHRISTIANITY. 233 

orders, a large amount and variety of general know- 
ledge, geographical, historical, statistical ; it has 
vastly expanded the modes of thinking usual with 
these orders ; it has ennobled their sentiments ; it 
has habituated them to generous, and, in a true 
sense, to liberal courses of behaviour ; it has 
thrown into discredit many frivolous or sensual em- 
ployments, or amusements ; it has trained thousands 
of young persons in the inestimably important habit 
of caring, in a sensitive and active manner, for the 
welfare of others ; and has much diverted from the 
channel of sordid selfishness, the ordinary current 
of thought. If we will hear and believe it, the 
missionary temper, diffused as it is on all sides, 
although attaching but to a portion of the people, 
has at length educated a class of citizens which, 
from its breadth of feeling, its fair intelligence, its 
familiarity with the course of events throughout 
the world, and its high feeling of whatever is just, 
humane, and Christian-like, may prove itself, in 
future perils of the state, the principal stay of a 
wise and religious government. 

The influence of the missionary work in sustain- 
ing and extending some religious communities 
which, years ago, were threatened with extinction, 
is not one of the least remarkable of its effects ; 
and if, at an early period of these evangelizing in- 
stitutions, the several evangelic bodies had so seen 
20* 



234 ON SPIRITtTAL 

their corporate interests, as to have amalgamated, on 
this ground— -to have dismissed their dilFerences as 
frivolous — to have consolidated their resources, to 
have distributed the work before them on some con- 
sistent principle of the division of labour ; and in 
a word to have chalked their path of benevolent 
universal conquest, from east to west, from north 
to south — if these things had happened, statesmen 
might have seen, with amazement, the government 
of the world in some measure taken out of their 
hands, by a moral power of continually increasing 
energy. 

No such concentration or condensation of the 
evangelic zeal has had place. But it is not certain 
that it may not in future. Whether it does or not, 
it is unquestionable that this benevolent care for 
the world, now exercised almost exclusively by the 
middle classes — this effective, and morally real 
colonial administration, cannot but confer a force, 
real also, upon those in whose hands it rests ; and 
therefore it does not leave the social balance be- 
tween them and the upper classes altogether un- 
affected. 

Whatever inference these considerations might 
suggest, it is abundantly certain that there can be 
but one mode in which an influence so wide and 
important can be shared by those who might think 
a good portion of it their due. — The power we are 



CHRISTIANITY. 235 

speaking of is — a moral and religious poiver ; and 
if we except some very transient participation of it, 
it can be wielded only in the mode of a sincere, 
ingenuous, and religious sympathy with the great 
purposes that are the objects of it. 

No factitious zeal, no pohtic compliances, no 
stooping to conquer, could avail for the purpose 
intended, or beyond the term of a few months. 
The evangelic work, inseparable as it is from 
Christianity when not curbed by despotism, would 
quickly fail, and reach its end, unless carried for- 
ward by a genuine religious impulse. 

There is then a vast movement going on near to 
us : — it embraces the earth : — it throws back upon 
its originators a proportionate moral power, a power 
not very remote, in some of its bearings, from po- 
litical power ; and yet it is such as can be exercised 
by none but those whose religious convictions are 
sincere and vigorous — by none but Christian men ! 
The glare and glitter of life may conceal these 
realities from our view ; but the more they are 
considered, and tlie better they are understood, the 
more will they seem to deserve the serious regard 
of those who would not choose to be ignorant of 
what may even suddenly come to press itself upon 
their attention. 

At the commencement of these Lectures we 
affirmed, what we most fully believe to be a fact 



236 ON SPIRITUAL 

— the inseparable connexion of Christianity with 
the welfare, nay, with the political existence of the 
British empire, and its cherished institutions. A 
course of events rapidly evolving, and tending to- 
ward some unknown issue, is convincing all parties 
— That a merely secular, or pohtical and heartless 
Christianity, will neither subserve the purposes of 
religion, nor even be able to sustain itself against 
the pressure of many hostile forces. It is proved, 
it is understood — it is admitted, that our Christianity 
must have a firm hold of our most sincere con- 
victions — that it must be deeply seated in our affec- 
tions — that it must command us as an independent 
power, as a positive authority, superior to secular 
influence, and as a principle which w^e may neither 
modify, nor compromise ; but which we must 
honour by an implicit> yet reasonable homage. 

This understood, as it seems to be on all sides 
among those who seriously think on the subject, a 
choice is to be made between those two forms of 
Christianity which alone are positive, authoritative, 
independent, and in a word potent, or which possess 
any intrinsic energy. 

These two competing systems, utterly incompa- 
tible one with the other, as they are, and founded 
upon principles exclusive one of the other, and 
which have never consisted the one with the other, 
.even for a day, have been brought into vehement 



CHRISTIANITY. 237 

collision by the controversies of the last seven years. 
It is a collision for w^hich all things, although we 
saw it not beforehand, were ripe ; and the issue of 
which must speedily bisect the professedly Christian 
world ; and at no very remote period after this 
partition has been effected, one of the two must 
meet its fate. 

We shall not incur the risk of being accused of 
misrepresentation in attempting any definition or 
description of that one of these forms which we 
regard as antichristian. But how imperfectly so- 
ever our task in the present instance may have been 
performed, we can scarcely have altogether failed 
to convey, in an intelligible manner, what we regard 
as essential to that other form of our religion which 
we assume to be alone genuine, apostolic, and 
spiritual ; — the Christianity which, as we believe, 
will be found in the inspired pages, by those who, 
in humble reliance upon the teaching of the Holy 
Spirit, give themselves to the serious perusal of the 
only authentic Rule of Faith. 



NOTES 



Note to Page 51. 

Even if we were to apply the phrase " Moral 
Evidence" in the vague manner in which it is often 
applied to human testimony, under whatever circum- 
stances rendered ; it must be granted, in very many 
instances, to reach the highest point of certainty. If 
many hundred persons, in dismay and disorder, pass 
my gate during the day, and all affirm the same thing — 
That London has been destroyed by an earthquake ; 
— if some of these homeless persons coolly and par- 
ticularly describe the catastrophe, while the phrenzied 
shrieks of others attest the fact in another manner — is 
this amount of testimony to be held as still questiona- 
ble, because it is nothing more than " moral evidence ?" 
At the moment when the first band of these wanderers 
came up, I might have been employed in following a 
mathematical demonstration. In turning from Euclid 
to listen to these tales of woe, I do indeed turn from 
one species of proof to another ; but do I also descend 
from certainties to mere probabilities ? None would 
say this. 

As to facts transmitted by books, the certainty of 
them may be of the very highest kind, even when the 



240 NOTES. 

mass of evidence, or its apparent hulk, is very small. 
In sucli instances certainty results from the circum- 
stances of the case ; and it is to be remembered 
that it is in no degree liable to be lessened by mere 
lapse of time. The existence of Shakspeare's Rich- 
ard TIL, in the time of James I., may now be ascer- 
tained without a doubt; — but, supposing our litera- 
ture to pass down entire to a distant age, the proof of 
this fact will be as good then, as it is to-day. Or 
otherwise to state the same case, we may now be 
as sure of the antiquity of the " Clouds" of Aristo- 
phanes, as we are of the date of the " Merry Wives 
of Windsor." And if a question relate to the genu- 
ineness of a single verse, a very small amount of sat- 
isfactory critical proof, may be enough to exclude all 
reasonable scepticism, and to warrant the decision — 
^* It is absolutely certain that this verse was from the 
hand of the author." 

We greatly misjudge historical questions — 

— When we assume them to be not susceptible of 
conclusive proof because established by Testimony, 
or Moral Evidence : — 

— When we hesitate to receive them as certain on 
account of the mere lapse of Time ; or — 

— When we suppose historical certainty to depend 
upon the larger or the smaller amount, or bulk of the 
evidence adduced. Good proof is good, whether it 
fill half a page, or a volume ; and whether it have 
Stood on a page fifty, or two thousand years. 



NOTES. 241 



Note to Page 58, 



That corruption of the Christian religion which its 
inspired teachers predicted as immediately to follow 
its first promulgation, is in one of these prophetic pas- 
sages called a '^ mystery of iniquity," which is the 
inspired designation also of the ripened " abomina- 
tions" of the Papacy; and it is remarkable that this 
endeavour to hold back the Truth — to " reserve" the 
principal elements of Christianity for a privileged class, 
has been the characteristic of each successive form of 
the apostasy from the second century to the nineteenth. 
Not less remarkable is the progression of these en- 
deavours from what was a very natural imitation of 
the philosophic economy of the same age, to its con- 
summation in the stern spiritual despotism which 
lodged the key of knowledge in the hands of the 
'' Vicar of Christ." 

Instead of " preaching the Gospel" to the people, 
without reserve, and in all simplicity, as the Apostles 
had done, the Rulers of the Church, ambitious of the 
dignity belonging to the teachers of a profound enig- 
matic doctrine, drew a line around themselves and the 
favoured few — the " initiated," to whom the depths of 
this new philosophy were to be opened. But this pro- 
ceeding, was alone enough to vitiate, the Christian 
ministry, compelling, as it did, the Teacher to impart 
to the mass of the people something less than the 
Truth, and to the initiated — something more. The 
21 



i42 NOTES. 

great principles of the Gospel were regarded as too 
sacred for the populace, and were felt to be too sim- 
ple—or too little in the style of the philosophy of the 
agOj to satisfy the *^ itching ears " of those who ex- 
pected profundities. 

When the gnostic infection was admitted by the 
Church, it brought with it a rule of caste still more 
injurious in its effects ; for it assumed the fact of a 
natural inequality among men — as " spiritual,'' or as 
" physical " and animal, by destination of birth. The 
mass of men could never be taught — " the Truth." 
This doctrine, directly opposed as it is to the first 
principle of the Gospel, could not consist with even 
an approximation to apostolic simplicity and evangelic 
zeal. From the time that it gained ascendancy in the 
Church, little was seen within it but spiritual arro- 
gance, on the part of the few, and the most abject 
prostration of the many at the feet of the clergy and 
the monks. 

Under the ascetic discipline, which reached its ma- 
ture condition in the fourth century, the gnostic princi- 
ple of reserving " Truth" as the distinction of a class, 
assumed the distinctness proper to the rules of a visible 
institute. The monks were the only Christians^ in 
the full sense of the term ; while the herd of mankind 
might be allowed to gather the crumbs of instruction, 
that fell from their master's table. 

The last step of this doctrine of darkness was that 
which confided all knowledge to the keeping of " the 



NOTES. 243 

Church," that is to say — of the hierarchy, governed 
by a single will, and armed with absolute and terrible 
powers, secular and spiritual. It is not easy to fix the 
moment at which this empire of night dates its com- 
mencement ; but the early part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury may be named as the hour of the most pitchy 
blackness. 



Note to Page 100. 

The Protestant Church of England does not 
simply affirm the *' Romish doctrine" concerning 
" worshipping and adoration, as well of Images as of 
Relics, and also Invocation of Saints," to he " a fond 
thing ;" but that these superstitions — elsewhere point- 
edly and universally reprobated, had been " vainly 
inventedJ^ By whom then invented ? It is not the 
usage of ingenuous writers or speakers, when they 
would designate those who may have given the last 
finish to a work which others had lon^ before orio^ina- 
ted, to call them its inventors. Whatever absurdities 
may have attached to the '• Romish " doctrine of the 
invocation of saints, or to the " Romish " practice of 
the adoration of relics — the doctrine, in its plenitude 
of impiety, and the practice, with all its shocking 
enormities, are of. least as ancient as that age from 
which it is said we should do well to learn our divinity, 
and our modes of worship, rather than from the age 
of the Reformation. 



244 N T £ :8 . 

This now professed preference can mean nothing, 
if it does not mean that the invocation of saints, and 
the worshipping of relics which the Reformers indig- 
nantly rejected, and which the Nicene divines as 
sedulously promoted, should be, by ourselves, reli- 
giously restored. 

Finding the intended limits of this volume already 
exceeded, I am compelled to refer the reader for the 
evidence bearing on this point, to the Sixth Number 
of " Ancient Christianity," in which a sample of the 
frightful idolatries of the fourth century is furnished. 
These, I think, will bear out the assertion. That, if 
the Christianity of the Nicene Church were restored 
in England, the difference between England, and 
Spain, Italy, or Belgium, would be perceptible only to 
the keenest eyes. Antiquity and Romanism differ not 
so much as the Religion of English Roman Catholics 
differs from the Popery of Irish Roman Catholics. And 
in truth the gross superstitions and shocking abuses 
of the fourth century far more nearly resemble Irish, 
than they do English Catholicism. It were therefore 
better for us to accept these same doctrines and prac- 
tices in their modern, than in their ancient guise. 
Both however are absolutely exclusive of apostolic 
Christianity. 

THE END. 



e^i-^i 



V 



^i 



V 




"■^^ 



•A_ 




? 



,r^ 



c 




■If^ 



^^ 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
\' # Treatment Date: April 2005 

' T PreservationTechnologies 

■%^-^^^i^ A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

^ • ^i-lTv 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 

Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
{724)779-2111 



',^m ^h 



M a/^A 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




,^v--^ 



014 085 201 6 



^^.A ni 









^'>^e^ 




^^^j';\fi;flfl*sffi««:i^ 



'A. 



'f^3 



"^'^m - 






^:A, .^^*M 



-VK, A 



^^^^ :f^'»i^ 



